Agriculture: Wisdom of the Uncivilized Crowds
Posted by Gail the Actuary on February 1, 2010 - 10:34am
This is a guest post by Suraj Kumar, who posts under the name sunson. He is a software engineer living in Bangalore, India. This is a link to his blog.
Picture this: A remote Indian village in the Ganges delta a few hundred years ago. The farmer starts his day by letting his flock of ducks into his irrigated fields. The water from the river brings with it, besides nutrients and alluvium, some unwanted (for the crops) pests too. But that is not a problem--the ducks will keep the pests in control. Not only that, they will turn those pests into manure and drop it right inside the pool of collected water to be anaerobically decomposed under the water.
Maybe the farmer doesn't realize it and thinks the Sun god and Nature goddesses are helping him. But that's just a coincidence that's helping him continue his ways. They worship the arrival of the stork--which, by the way, even the Japanese and Chinese do. Coincidence? (I'm willing to bet Mexicans do that too!) There are still pockets in India where people's lifestyles are frozen in time and haven't changed much.
The saying goes Unity in Diversity, and it's true for stable ecosystems. Agriculture as it has been practiced in India over centuries has relied and depended on nature's forces. Whether we evolved our practices, designed the system by hand, or got it by sheer luck overnight... every Indian alive today is a proof that we survived in this region for several thousand years. The fertility due to the unique geographical structure of the sub-continent is a natural gift. Consciously/sub-consciously/systemically realizing it and living on it for thousands of years is wisdom.
The Great Change
Then came along the colonialists. We all kinda know what happened. I'd just like to place an exerpt from Lord Macaulay's speech in the British Parliament on 2nd Feb 1835 (quoted elsewhere in various contexts on the web--typically nationalistic sounding ones). I first found it in Amartya Sen's book The Argumentative Indian:
"I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."
Several things changed after the advent of the colonialists. Some for "our" good, one could argue? For instance, the colonialists left at the end of a major war. (One of the root-causes was colonisation itself!) India was freed, right? The specific form of exploiting of India's resources changed from that of direct occupation to a more subtle and effective form called "Free Trade". The Bretton Woods system ratified all capitalist nations' interests in continued exploitation of natural resources by the still-ruling powers of the world (namely US, Britain, France, etc.). Free Trade, in other words, is a system of exploitation of a so-called Third World nation's resources by someone with Little Green Pieces of Paper on the lines of, "If you let me take your stuff, you'll get these little green pieces of paper with which you can buy the finished goods I produce using your nation's resources."
Female infanticide
Besides improvement in the quality of lives of those people who accepted the little green pieces of paper, there were arguably some other improvements. For instance, they "taught" the peoples what it means to be "humane". Female infanticide, what a terrible and ruthless thing it is! But... it is also important to realize that this so-called "inhumane" killing of the girl baby is a very effective means of population control. (By no means am I justifying or arguing for female infanticide here. Far from it.)
In the wild, many males go unmated. A male doesn't mean more individuals. A female that survives, however, very likely results in more children. Educating the females coupled with eradication of female infanticide would have worked. But with India, it was a half done job... and that's worse than not doing the job at all.
Take away that population stabilisation mechanism of female infanticide and add to it the joke called the Green Revolution, and India saw her population rise and her once-stable ways of life completely changed forever. Today, we're a billion+ and to feed that growing population, we had to adopt ways of agriculture that were previously not thought of. Today, India boasts of vast areas of degraded soil. It was a forgone conclusion that she would end up in this situation given the decisions that were made by the so-called Leaders of that Era.
Where be the Wisdom?
The colonialists are back (strong statement, indeed ;-) )--under the name of Monsanto, DuPont and several other MNC "Agri Businesses" who promise to solve the problem of the world's poverty. (Does that ring a bell?) Last time, it was by releasing the locked up nitrogen in a finite endowment of natural gas to create fertilizers, developing an infrastructure of farm mechanisation that relied (and still relies) on fossil fuels (specifically diesel) and quickly releasing water stored up in deep aquifers through the use of, yet again, cheap fossil fuels. (A significant portion of electricity comes from Coal + Oil + Natural Gas.)
This time, they're back with the same old excuse of attempting to solve world's poverty by manipulating our domesticated life forms' DNA.
So what exactly is their system of "solving world hunger"?
1. The company has had a successful herbicide product called Round Up. (Remember, Agent Orange?) The herbicide kills just about anything in its way. Earlier, farmers had to exercise care when spraying the herbicide because they ran the risk of killing their own crops too. Roundup is a non-selective weed killer. The paradox with life is that, the more we apply selection pressure, the more "evolved" the species we're trying to kill becomes. This is because those individuals that could be killed are already gone! The ones that remain are the ones who were difficult to kill in the first place, and if they manage to leave their progeny, those progeny are likely equally difficult too! Over just a few generations, things become very difficult for one generation of humans. The use of just the herbicide alone didn't scale well. We talk "scale" only when we talk growth. However, stability needs resilience. The job done by the frogs, the sparrows, the spiders, the lizards and the earthworms were now replaced by one single plastic bottle with a TradeMarked logo on it. How neat?
2. Since the herbicide solution didn't scale they had to do a round two of their fight against nature - through Genetic Engineering. They "invented" a new "variety" of crop that was resistant to the herbicide (called "Round Up Ready Whatever"). All was good for a while, until recently (2 years ago) when farmers started reporting Super Weeds. Life evolves in amazingly powerful ways. This was just one example.
3. Genetic Engineering has two peculiar problems:
a. Bugs: If a Microsoft writes buggy code, they can send a "fix". But what happens when there are "bugs" in the genetically engineered code? How do you fix a plant? Today's genetic engineering methods are still crude. It's not like we insert a nano-particle that reads through the genes and "modifies" the genes. They merely insert some other animal's genes that produces the desired proteins!
b. Intellectual Property: Life replicates. That's the equivalent of piracy, only naturally done by the bees.
To avoid these two problems, they introduced Terminator Technology. Simply put, the seeds produced by the GM crops aren't seeds. They cannot produce new plants when sown. They're merely grains for consumption. Seed saving--the very practice that brought about agriculture, will no longer be applicable since the seeds are all impotent. I'm sure we have all read about farmer suicides and the wide-spread cause of suffering due to this very enslavement.
Ah, solve hunger by killing people? That makes sense! Oh wait, that "scale" requires farm machinery which, by today's infrastructure, is all designed to run on diesel.
Now, I'd like to draw you to the end of this post by instilling a sense of hope through this real life story that I've been quite proud of...
On our farm, we decided to sow only native variety rice seeds. We picked two varieties namely "Garudan Samba" and "Gandakasala". We had to obtain them with much difficulty since the government makes only narrow-mindedly designed rice varieties from the IRRI available to the farmers. At first, the locals (having forgotten their own ways of traditional, resilient agriculture) laughed at us and even questioned if such things will be "practical" in today's world. Grace be to the all merciless, non-existent God! The rains poured and destroyed their crops at a completely unseasonal time. Our crops were damaged, but not destroyed completely. Now, they are beginning to see the advantanges.
They're curious to find out how to obtain these seeds. They're still using pesticides. But they're beginning to see the birds perched atop our now-growing trees helping with pest control. They're still using fertilizers but that's because:
1. Fertile, naturally rich soils aren't anywhere around. Our soil has just begun the recovery from the damages due to prolonged nitrogen fertilizer use in the past (ie., before we bought this land).
2. Fertilizers are still pretty much free flowing in this Peak Moment.
I've become pretty much cynical that most of the time, it is only the shock doctrine that helps bring the masses to reality. Those very things can also be learnt by applying thought--however challenging or even depressing that might seem initially.
If you'd like to "take away" anything from this post: All I ask the reader to do is to switch to locally produced foods that are not GM. Every paisa is a profit that helps further their ways of enslavement and suffering. It kills our wisdom, however foolish and ridiculous it might sound to the "Free Thinking" West. Ridicule works and we must not fall prey to their old ways. Free Thought brings with it a sense of confidence and a dash of arrogance. Knowing that arrogance is Wisdom. Evolutionary studies today show that the genetic differences amongst the so-called "races" are totally insignificant and that it has just been mere chance that led to the rise and fall of several civilizations. The people of this sub-continent didn't use coal in 19th century and oil in the 20th century like the "Colonisers" were doing. But coal and oil are just finite resources. The success of the West is only temporary, and eventually the West will have to deal with reality in ways we've all come to accept in the past--thousands of years ago.
An American Indian quote to end the post:
Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
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This is a fairly astounding post for the Oil Drum, for notwithstanding its small radical audience, it really is about oil, not about worlds without oil.
Nevertheless, I think there is a large sympathy for this perspective. And I believe that the arrogant Monsanto and DuPont and American Cyanamid and the rest are actually extremely fearful that they will fail. And fail they will! - maybe even in my own lifetime.
My wife and I attended a protest of Bio2005 in San Francisco. It was extremely tightly organized (by Starhawk, among others), and included presentations by Vandana Shiva and other luminaries in the anti-GMO pantheon. There couldn't have been more than a few hundred of us that actually attended the entire 4-day affair, but the San Francisco city police behaved like we were a bunch of fanatical terrorists, out to destroy the Moscone center. The image of Union Square surrounded by dozens of armored police vehicles, paddy wagons, troop transporters, police motorcycles and probably 50 police in riot gear while we were conducting a "really, really free market" is vivid in my mind.
Who do all these police represent, who do they protect. Not the poor farmer, I will wager.
The author has some different perspectives to offer--with admittedly rather strong beliefs about about what has happened in the past. I think some of the other agriculture posts have sort of pointed in this direction.
Obviously the opinions of the posters don't necessarily represent the opinion of the site. Everyone at the site has his or her own opinion. We present posts so that they can be argued with, and the flaws found. Given the time difference with India, it is a little harder to talk with the author himself.
Gail -- I appreciate that you are open enough to these considerations to post this. I was just surprised.
I don't see what can be disputed in any general way about what is said here about the past.
I can. A strong meme in doomerism is that agriculture is unsustainable, period. India's population is second only to China. I don't think characterizing india as a mecca of sustainability if only the dirty westerners were to leave them alone is fair. I am not a fan of Monsanto/GMO, etc... but the problems in India run a lot deeper than "colonialism".
They may run deeper, but they run at least that deep.
"I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre...".
That is one beautiful quote, from 1835, and about the last time anything like that was likely to be said about India...its particularly stunning to me as I've been up to my ears in books on population and population controls, and India under the British is the ever-present train wreck example used for decades to frighten the rest of the world. With good reason, perhaps, and what's done can hardly be undone, but its good to know that it was different before.
It's reminiscent of a number of articles in the book "Against Civilization", when talking of primitive peoples. Generally, civilization has made life harder and riskier.
Interesting post.
EU pesticide legislation is leading more to the concept of integrated pest management. In the UK Defra is now signing up to the concept of sustainable food production (see Food 2030) even though big science is pushing more for GM food.
Last night idly watching Jimmy Docherty on tv I saw a stunning example of push-pull companion planting to combat striga and grain moths in Kenya,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qg54h/Jimmys_Global_Harvest_Kenya/
but the programme made equally strong points for cell culture of bananas to improve yields.
In the UK its estimated that about 1/3rd of households now grow some fruit and veg and there is a lot of interest in growing food organically and increased interest in permaculture principles.
So its not all doom and gloom and there are real signs here that both govt and population are moving away from unsustainable food growing
GMO is a realy good idea but it is a pity that the technology were pressed into service before it became advanced, I am not even sure if it is good enough today. And we seem to get the same kind of problem with primitive nanotechnology. :-(
GM technology has enormous power in it. Just like OIL.
as the saying goes, 'With great power comes a great responsibility'
So the question is, "How do we make sure those with Great Power are going to find the Self-control to act responsibly?"
Those with inordinate amounts of power need to be held accountable. There, I said it. Sounds almost as easy as 'Population Control', doesn't it? .. and probably as important to achieve.
Well said. Here is another example of how this stuff works in our society: An Einstein and an Oppenheimer might have pondered about the implications of nuclear power. But... it was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Inevitable?
I can't agree. "round-up ready" crops? Meaning you spray everything including the plants that you will consume(directly or indirectly)?
Round-up is a foliar absorbed translocated herbicide. When this round-up ready corn, soybeans, alfalfa...whatever is sprayed the round-up is absorbed and moved within the plant. It stays there long enough that it is showing up in food. That this makes sense to anyone is beyond me.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto_and_the_Roundup_Read...
With the repeated use of any agricultural chemical control - control is temporary. We learned that 10 sprays of the same insecticide is going to give you roughly a 90% resistant insect population. (ever heard of Darwin?) Rotation between various chemical groups or families delays resistance.
"primitive" bug control methods using ducks is very similar to using "the two brick method" of bug control. "resistance in treated populations" = 0%. Laugh all you want at the authors notes on life before colonization, he makes valid and unarguable points. Sorry not much profit for others in it eh?
I don't know where you got the ten use and ninety percent resistant insects figure but it is an exaggeration in my experience and that of any farmers I know and the pesticides we have used.
Resistance is a very real problem with insecticides but it generally takes longer than ten insect generations of a target for significant resistance to develop.
We have been using a lot of the same pesticides for human generations now and are still getting good control.
I do not doubt however that in some cases resistance can show up in as little as ten generations.In such cases the usual procedure among skillfull operators is to use the pesticide as sparingly as possible, applying it ONLY in a spot there is an outbreak,and only IF there is an outbreak.When this strategy is combined with rotation among pesticides, significant resistance may not appear for a very long time if ever.
The idea nowadays is not to wipe out a pest but to knock it's numbers down to a level where the damage it does is acceptable from a production and marketing perspective.
As a matter of fact this is the in direction pesticide use strategy has been evolving.The "spray schedule" will probably be a thing of the past before another decade is out, except for a few very mild chemicals such as the oils sprayed on fruit trees to control bark dwelling pests.
Modern pesticides are not nearly as persistent or as dangerous as the old standbys used when the attention of the public was strongly focused on this issue but they are very expensive, and applying them is expensive too.
A typical farmer today is actually pretty conservative in his use of such expensive inputs as a matter if necessity.
In the orchard business today we spend a lot of time and money implementing control strategies to control diseases and pests such as rats that were formerly controlled with powerful and persistent but cheap poisons.A lot of these strategies are identical to the ones used by organic growers, who were the first to develop them.We are essentially returning to the methods used by our great grand parents in some cases and adopting strategies developed by modern organic growers in others.
Of course since the organic movement is mostly under the control of true believers and/or those interested in SELLING an idea to the consumer , we will get no credit or recognition for adopting or reverting to these practices.It's gotta be all or nothing, like God or abortion or gun control,if either side can get the upper hand.And right now the organics side most definitely is winning big in the public relations wars.
And most of us here are aware of the results obtained over the long term when business SELLS an idea to the consumer.The results include Hummers and Expeditions , Big Macs and Budwieser, I could go on all day but I have some things to do.
10 use 90% was gee...30 yrs ago in college. I know 1st hand how expensive chemicals are.
I see some resistance to certain chemicals with botyrtis. Also the pyrethyroid's are horrible at resistance in insects.
I agree that the over use of chemicals has dwindled due to financial reasons and regulation, and who really likes to spray?
I rotate and rely more on oils/soaps to reduce populations, spend more time monitoring and less time spraying. If people just got use to eating more bugs that are not homogenized into their food like peanut butter.....
When BT first came out we were using matasystox, lindane, and others to try and control leaf rollers. I think both metasystox and lindane illegal here now, haven't used them in 20 years. We could spray every week and get no results. 1 application of BT and poof- gone.
The predator/prey part of ducks(and BT) I like and find hard to argue with. This doesn't mean I'm going out and buying some ducks. I too have a business to run.
Some GMO have BT generation inside and this is carried by pollen to non GMO crops - killing non target pests.
R-up ready crops are a bad idea in my mind, you end up eating it, or your cow, horse, whatever.
I find the duck thing completely in line with good stewardship. I suppose they are wing clipped...
Mr.Kumar makes a powerful case, one that cannot be repudiated easily annd probably not at all.I tend to agree with him in nearly everything he says.Of all the things that the English did in India,there are only two that I am aware of that I think are wholly justiafiable and laudable-one is that they established a system of govt based on a civil service and law which survived the colonial era and gave India a huge head start as afrree nation.The other was to spread literacy far and wide.
The world is a Darwinian place and there is no point now in decrying the injustice of colonial era politics among people who are aware of just how cruel and calculating conquering nations tend to be-that milk was mostly spilt a long time ago and there are plenty of other forums where the issue is debated endlessly-but as soon as I have finished typing "endlessly " I realize that probably a large portion of TOD visitors DON'T know very much colonial history, and that the little they do know is almost certainly grotesquely distorted as a result of being written by apologists for the colonial powers..
In respect to the female infanticide issue, I would like to add that we in the US have allowed ourselves to become paralyzed by an unwillingness to face up the reality in many respects, createing taboos concerning the discussion of many critical issues.In recent decades this tendency has come into full flower in the form of PC-political correctness.It has it's pluses of course but I worry that it may also prevent us from recoginizing and dealing with some potentially critical problems that may metasticize if not dealt with whlie they are still manageable.
The Brits when they eliminated the practice failed to think it thru, violating a primary rule of farmers everywhere first promulgated probably about the time fences and gates were invented:NEVER open a gate until you know for sure what lives on the other side-behind the gate.
Mr Kumar is probably correct when he says that if women were given the opportunity to become educated at the same time the policy might not have caused a fast rise of the population.My positoin in this respect is that education alone might not have been sufficient-the establishment of a new economy providing employment opportunities off the subsistence farms plus plenty of cheap goods might also be necessary.If a couple doesn't see some hope of being provided for in thier old age other than by thier children,they may well opt for the large family regardless of thier educational level.Lots of good jobs mean that fewer kids, or govt programs, can be counted on for the necessary old age support.
Insofar as the differing ABILITIES of the various races of people are concerned ,I agree with the author wholeheartedly.For anyone interested in reading an entertaining and lucid account of the various circumstances that converged in thier favor and allowed the English to create thier
empire, I strongly reccomend Diamond's "Guns , Germs and Steel".Don't let the title throw you-this book is already recognized as one of the great works of our times and will be required reading in history, political science, economics, etc,classes from now on.
My own professors back in ag school in the late sixites were full of misgivings in respect to the Green Revolutuon and the third world, looking forward to the very results we have today-this was pre PC and a professor could say as bluntly and as saltily as he pleased that if we "go over there and show'em how to double thier (food ) production, there'll just be twice as many of'em in twenty years." Nevertheless they did what they could in most cases to further the export of our western methods, having some faith in the third world being able to bootstrap itself up to first world status.
Now we have the tiger by the tail and while debating how this came to be is an extraordnarily important question, it is not nearly so important, or at least so pressing a question, as figuring out how to turn the tiger loose.To be honest I can see no outcome other than a disaster in the making, giving peaking resorces , especially oil, water, and money.
My personal opinion of corporate ag is so low that I can't really express it in civil terms-Leanan would have to throw me off the site.
We need to start with a drastic overhaul of our patent laws.Then we neded to house break the corporations ala John Micheal Greer's piece of a couple of weeks ago.
Actually that never happenned during the British Raj.
From wikipedia
What was really useful was that a few rich Indians who got educated in Britain brought back ideas that shaped the nation - be it Gandhi, Nehru or Roy. Not that there weren't any well meaning British administrators ....
If you were going to be colonized, the English Colonies have fared the best (the US, Canada, Australia, India, Nigeria, Kenya, etc.).
One would not want to be colonized by the Spanish, or the Portuguese.
The Catholic Church was responsible for the horrendous state of most of these colonies, a toxic meme still oppressing the populations.
I had a conversation about this with a guide while I was trekking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru. He was a descendant of the original Incas, so he may have been biased, but he felt the ex-British colonies had been far better treated by their colonial masters than the ex-Spanish colonies. However, the Spanish killed or enslaved most of the Incas, so the standards were not high.
The English at least felt they had some responsibilities toward their colonial subjects (an idea that did not really trouble the Spanish) so they did put in some basic social structures, such as a fairly high quality school system and a relatively competent bureaucracy. They did make an attempt to govern them fairly and honestly. They left India with a decent school system, by third-world standards, and a reasonably competent and honest (albeit monumentally inefficient) bureaucracy, two things that the former Spanish colonies did not get.
Blaming the English for their colonial failures wears thin after a few generations. India has been independent for over 60 years, so they have adequate time to make up for past mistakes. And actually India is doing a lot better than many countries and making good progress, severe overpopulation notwithstanding.
Yeah, too bad most American natives in the North could not enjoy this better treatment because they were all slaughtered beforehand. Compare this with Spanish Latin-America which is full of natives.
The English applied their well tested method: kill them to relieve them of their suffering.
I guess the Spanish were not well-organized enough to slaughter the entire population.
In Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, he reported meeting a spanish general, whose ambition was to kill all of the natives in SA.
Canada didn't kill off their indians.
And didn't the Indians kill off the Folsom people?
Infectious European diseases got most of them before they ever saw a pale face. And we kicked the Brits out and did in the rest without thier help, except the ones within about three hundred miles of the Atlantic coast.
That's true. About 90% of the natives in North America died of various plagues before white men ever reached their territories. It wasn't deliberate, the germ theory of disease had not been invented yet, and the Europeans had no idea that the Indians were not resistant to their diseases.
When they got there, the white men discovered a continent that was mostly devoid of people. In the US they did their best to drive the rest onto the least valuable land.
In Canada, they actually gave the natives the first choice of land, and the natives still have a lot of good land, often bordering on major cities. But, in Canada there were not a lot of natives in the first place, and only a minority of them survived the plagues.
Recent Canadian censuses have indicate that there are about 2 million people of native descent, which is probably more than there ever were. However, you can't really tell who most of them are because they have blended into the general population. There was never any real barrier to interracial marriage, and many of the Indians didn't look any different than the whites to being with.
I remember reading somewhere that in North America there were at least some deliberate spreadings of disease (like giving out blankets previously used by people who had contagious smallpox). Later on Canada's residential schools were rather effective at wiping out native people's culture.
Even now Native people form about 4% of the population in Canada, but form about 20% of the prison population, showing that some conditions continue to be dis-equal.
I remember this accusation being applied to a rather large variety of early explorers. The problem I have with it is that the germ theory of disease was not generally accepted until the 20th century. Prior to 1900, the most commonly accepted theory was the miasma theory, which held that disease was caused by bad air.
Naturally, if you believed that smallpox was caused by bad air, you would have no qualms about donating the blankets of a recently deceased smallpox patient to somebody who needed them.
You have to realize that the Spanish took over two major empires, the Aztec Empire and the Inca Empire, which were much more developed than the cultures north of them, which were mostly hunter-gatherer societies. And the goal of the Spanish conquest was not to kill the natives, but to enslave them. The Spanish didn't want to be farmers, they wanted to be conquerors.
In North America, it wasn't the English who tried to destroy the natives, but the American settlers. In fact, one of the causes of the American Revolution was that the English wanted to maintain peace with the natives, and the American settlers wanted to take their land away from them. See American Indian Wars for more details.
Sorry sir. From the very page you've referenced:
This is pretty much what happened in India too :) The English had to systematically Divide And Rule since 1600. The real "wars" between the now-united-indians and the british started only much later, with the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Of course, until then, the East India Company promptly diverted the focus of the Powers of any given territory to spend frivolously, per the Divide and Rule principles.
In the Americas, the estimates range from 10 to 100 million for the number killed by the Europeans. The population densities in in what is now Latin America were much higher and so the absolute numbers are probably worse there. But as Bl4ckVo1d, point out, the percentage of survivors also appears much higher south of the border. Also, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World preceded those of the English in India by a century or more, which may have affected the results.
I think it is also strange to say that the Spanish did not put in "basis social structures". Latin America today is much more European than India. Even Qusqu, amazing Incan stonework notwithstanding, looks fairly Spanish.
Cusco, the ancient Inca capital of Peru, looks Spanish because the Spanish conquerors tore all the Inca buildings down and rebuilt them in Spanish style. They did their best to destroy anything that was Inca. All that remains is the foundations and lower walls of the Inca city.
However, a major earthquake in 1950 knocked down some of the Spanish buildings and exposed the Inca walls, which have since been restored. The Quechua natives were quite proud of the fact that the Spanish buildings fell down down but Inca structures remained standing. They pointed out a number of the earthquake-resistant features of Inca construction to me.
I use the Spanish name Cusco because I can't pronounce the Quechua name and I don't really think you can spell it with the Latin alphabet.
Sure, I am not defending the destruction of the Americas, but from the Spanish perspective of the time, they were trying to improve things by giving the natives their culture, which at the time was that of the most powerful and wealthy empire in the world. The US had a similar perspective in the 20th century. Maybe wealth and power always leads to destruction, or maybe just when mixed with religion.
Not really. Spain at that time had a population of what? 7 million? I'm having trouble getting a good source. However, it's estimated that the Inca Empire had a population of about 16 million, the Aztec Empire about 20 million, and both were very highly developed civilizations. They were much bigger and highly developed than the native cultures to the north, and in fact they were bigger and more populous than any country in Europe, including Spain.
Following the conquest, around 90-95% of the native population died of various causes, and the Spanish tore down all of their religious buildings and major cities, and shipped all their gold and silver to Spain. They replaced the native religions with their own Catholicism, destroyed all their writings and works of art, and killed anybody who objected. This is not what I would call, "trying to improve things by giving the natives their culture."
Far be it from me to rush to the defense of the Spanish colonial system, but RMG’s blanket statements perpetuating the Black Legend shows he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about and is just so over the top I have to weigh in. From de las Casas forward, there was a lively debate in Spanish intellectual and ecclesiastical circles about the best treatment for the newly conquered subjects, quite enlightened even by our modern standards. The rights of natives were actively defended by several interests (church, crown), not least because Indian labor for the mines or for the haciendas which supplied the mines was essential for the generation of wealth for the mother country and for the functioning of the state administrative structure (given the mercantilist economic philosophy and policies of the Spanish crown). In Cuzco, sure, the Spanish deliberately used the excellent Inka stonework as foundations on which they built various buildings as well as churches on top of native sacred sites to facilitate conversion (though this had the unintended effect of perpetuating many native beliefs in the syncretized religious belief and practice now known as folk catholicism).
But this tone of sweeping denunciation is just irritating. The Spanish launched a BIG project, like it or not, and the situation in both Peru and Mexico, sites of major state systems and dense populations, was complex. Depopulation was uneven and recovery varied greatly by region (Mexico sooner than Peru).
Again, this is not to defend Spanish policy or practice, rather to urge us to be a little more thoughtful before making such sweeping statements (“tore down...all the buildings and cities”, “destroyed all their writings and works of art”, “killed anybody who objected”, etc. Please, do some homework first...and “make accounts of things as simple as possible, but not simpler.” (paraphrasing Einstein)
You have to realize I heard this story from the Quechua perspective, not the Spanish perspective. The descendants of the Incas are still living in Peru today (they are the largest any American Indian group in the world today) and they are not at all happy about what happened to their civilization.
I'm sure that the Spanish version of the events is completely different, and while it is true that the winners of any war get to write the history books, I didn't talk to them about it. I wasn't talking to the winners, I was talking to the losers. From their perspective, the Spanish were pretty bad. That was why they eventually drove the Spanish out.
Despite indigenous uprisings, it was creole elites who drove the Spanish out. Also, very few Cuzquenos, let alone Peruvians more generally, are literally descended from the "Inkas" per se, as that was the ruling nobility of the Inka theocratic state.
To be sure, sharp racial, ethnic and class divisions are ongoing realities in the Andean social space, legacy of the colonial period in large part. So your Inka Trail guide's resentment is entirely understandable. But indigenous identity has been and is complex and dynamic, always managed in relation to who people are with...including gringo tourists. Rather like our own management of our presentations of ourselves.
My point was and is that you should strive for a more well-rounded perspective on such complex situations before making the kinds of sweeping statements you did, based apparently in this case on a sample size of...one.
The term "Inca" properly applies only to the ruler. However, the problem arises as to what to call all the rest of the people, since the Inca Empire consisted of a variety of different peoples under the control of the Inca. The largest group were Quechuas, but that group also contains people who were enemies of the Inca. So, when I refer to the "descendants of the Incas", I am referring to the descendants of all the people who were in the Inca Empire. It's all semantics, anyway.
When you are in the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco, it's perfectly obvious that the Spanish tore all the Inca buildings down to the foundations and rebuilt them in the Spanish style. There was no real reason to do so, other than to erase evidence of the high Inca culture. The Inca buildings themselves were extremely well built - they had some of the best stone masons in the world - and were earthquake-proof, which the Spanish buildings are not. The only reason the world heritage Machu Picchu site survived is that the Spanish never found the city. If they had, they would have torn it down like all the others.
Almost all the artifacts of the period are gone, too. The Spanish melted down all the gold and silver articles and shipped them back to Spain, and destroyed almost everything else of cultural significance. I was in an huge museum in Chiclayo (the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipán) which has an amazing collection of pre-Inca gold and silver artifacts, but the only reason there were any artifacts left to display is that the Spanish never found the royal tombs. Anything they found is gone.
Now, you can say I should strive for a more well-rounded perspective, but the fact is that the Spanish track record in South America was just not very good no matter how you look at. And I have read a lot of the literature surrounding it - I always research the culture and history everywhere I go.
My post was aimed at getting the Indian masses to wake up. On hindsight, I concur there is an unintended conveying of "the English was the cause". Far from it.
To give an example: Raja Raja Chola, hailed to be the greatest king (we don't know how "Great" he was and we only go by historical records). His society was an Elephant powered society. For agriculture, for war, for construction. No wonder, he could build an empire of _scale_ over three generations (him, his son and his grand-son) that reached from Sri Lanka in the south all the way to South East Asia.
Is his massive use of energy (for those days) only a coincidence to his "success"? Art, Literature and "science" flourished, thanks to all that plenty of food and all that free time subsidised by the domesticated Elephants! I'm sure, like with today's wars, several thousands of lives must have been lost in war and famine. For all we know, maybe some societies that were captured and destroyed had better sustainable ways of living? There is nothing called Free Lunch.
I hope the general sense that prevails after reading through my post would be that of "Today's way of life is borrowing from the principal in nature's account" and "We can't let others do the thinking for us." Please let me know if this is not so - I'll see how I can reword my post to send the right message.
Good morning, sunson. Your post is great!
I thought it was a marvelous post and was astonished to see replies referencing "blaming the British." I didn't get that from your article at all. The general sense you hoped people would take away from your post is what I got.
BTW, have you read One-Straw Revolution? Your post had the feel and ideas similar to Fukuoka's.
Thanks for a beautiful post. I hope it gets reposted in places with a more receptive audience.
lilith
Sunson your post was one of the best I have read here. But I hope you do more than get the Indian masses to wake up. I hope you get the folks on this site who think technology will save us to wake up. This modern culture formed of technology and cheap fuel is wasting the world's soils away. Whatever one thinks of previous cultures, many who also ruined their soil, this one has done more to ruin the planet we live on than any previous culture. Not intended by most, just a lot of educated ignorance. I grew up learning all about microbes but not about the microbes in the soil who build fertility and are killed by modern farming practices. I learned about washing hands and taking drugs but not about promoting my own resistance by food grown on healthy soil.
You might have also written about NEEM oil the wonderful product of India's trees that a US company tried to patent. Since it had been used by Indians for ages what right had any western company to patent it. Colonialism is still practiced, just more craftily.
I have never thought any civilization to be better than another or any people or culture better or worse, but I have also never thought my own to be superior. But that doesn't matter as much as the foolishness of loosing the knowledge that one culture has in order to dominate them. The industrial civilization is so proud of its accomplishments that it cannot see itself heading into doom and bringing the rest of the world's dying cultures with it. It is worst in the sense that it is most powerful and most global and thus more destructive.
Hmmmm ... where do we begin ? I'd just say you need to read more.
Let me just make one point - when the Europeans first came to India it was in no way comparable to the situation of Spanish Conquedors. Mughals were still in prime - the full british army couldn't have made a dent - let alone the ragtag East india company.
The transfer of wealth from India to Britain was monumental. India may have gaven substantial amount of the capital needed by British for their industrial revolution.
http://india_resource.tripod.com/eastindia.html
Let me ask you a question: Do you think, given a 60 years, the current Afghanistan government would have helped afghanistan become better? I'm not talking about media-campaigns that you watch on Fox. I'm talking about Ground Reality. Will the average man feel better?
Having born and grown up in India, I can say: Not one thing pushed forward by the Government ever since 1947 has been without a corporate motive behind it. The 5 year plans of Nehru were heavily influenced by his "friends". Pre freedom, Post freedom, post opening up of the Economy (1991-2) - the theme is the same. India kept following certain ideals imposed via Education to the "to-be-formed" leaders.
In other words, I boldly make a claim (with an implied disclaimer :) )... Afghanistan's new government or Iraq's new government are just re-implementations of a well proven strategy used in the third-world nations since a long time ago.
Are you saying that because of the institutions that the British left, India has taken the wrong course for 60 years? If so, I think I'd agree. I'm not a great scholar of all things Indian but I get the impression that they are trying to head down the same consumptive path as the unsustainable developed nations have trod. And with a greatly increase population.
As an Indian I have to agree with your last paragraph. 60 years is time enough to fix many problems. My biggest criticism of Nehru (our first prime minister) is that he did not put enough emphasis on universal literacy and make it a burning priority for the first 20 years of independence. Our story might very well have been different. We might have had only 800 million people to deal with today.
His daughter, Indira Gandhi, did a lot more damage. She, while not personally corrupt, institutionalized corruption. Today it is a way of life, especially for those who can afford it, to pay a few hundred rupees to a government officer to get approvals, etc. It is the real cancer that eats up our society.
I am not sure that the British left a high quality school system. They might have left a few good schools. I think the Catholic missionaries (and I am a product of one of those) have done more for good schooling than the British did.
The British also left a very good railway system for us. We have not capitalized on that enough.
Srivathsa
The point of the post was to learn from the acquired wisdom of the ancient people (specifically about agriculture but in general, also about other so-called blind practices which seems to make a "swarm sense"). It was certainly not written to compare what is good with us that wasn't good with them. I'm sure we'll find a ton more of good things that have resulted from Oil (such as the abolition of slavery, "holidays" and transportation at costs never imaginable by the kings of the past, a relatively very well-off period in our history with very few wars, cheap communication and so on)! But of what use will it be to be proud of a finite resource that we seem to have been only depleting? :)
The Indian govt of the past 60 years is nothing but a result of that very english education. It was a system that ultimately helped the same powers get back into the region to continue their exploitation. First came the reduction of the various religious beliefs into a handful few. Hinduism has a much recent history than you'd think. Although, the Hinduism propagating machinery today is one large powerful movement created by the British. Interestingly, the same group was called a "Terrorist group" by the then-ruling British. Hmmm...
However, Before all these changes occured, India[1] didn't win - she played the game for over 5000 years in ways that clearly are stabler than our current ways of life. People didn't aspire to accumulate wealth, though they might have "patched up the gaping divide between human nature and society" with whatever religious beliefs that best suited them.
[1] What is "India", afterall? It was a convenient name given by the British Raj to the various territories that existed (through trade, cultural interchanges and war) in the region. "Hinduism" is the result of the British raj combining the so many diverse openly debated (and, undeniably fought over too, I'm sure :) ) belief systems into a simplified name. From Atheism to Agnosticism to Jainism to Buddhism to uni/poly/nature worshipping religions - were all part of these peoples' survival strategies!). A tribe, who still exist, in the sunderbans (where the great tiger evolved!) have a prayer that goes on the lines of "Oh bees, we only want you to go away. We don't mean to kill you. We can't make the honey, only you can. Please do come back when we're gone". A cute prayer with a profound wisdom, isn't it?
Hi , Ev You are correct and I should have been a more careful in the way I expressed myself-the British spread the SEEDS of literacy far and wide by educating a few people wherever they were needed well enough to function as thier underlings.
This was not done deliberately with the specific goal of modernizing India of course but the same basic strategy is often used today in spreading new technology , or more accurately, old technology, to new places.Some rich person or foundation puts enough of it in the hands of the locals to get the process started growing.
Infanticide was common around the world. Even as little 100 years ago it was often practiced in Japan and not just female infants. Usually the parents had as many children as they could feed (they knew exactly how many that was by how much rice they could grow or how many baskets they could weave, etc.) After that number was reached, it would be dangerous to the whole family to have more because then the whole family would starve. The authorities often knew and understood and let people do this in order to avoid starvation down the line.
But I read also that when families did leave a baby in a field, they would often come back and check later to see if it was still alive. Sometimes it was, that meant it was a strong one and they might take it home and try to raise it despite everything.
Also, there arose a spiritual system to allow people to communicate with the spirits of their departed children (not just infanticide but all sorts of reasons, illnesses, miscarriages, accidents, etc.) There is a special Buddha who embraces and shelters the spirits of departed children.
The whole system evolved so that people could cope with their feelings of grief and powerlessness, yet not tip their whole families into starvation....of course, birth control was not really possible although I`ve read that a few people had some knowledge of herbs and other plants which might have helped with that.
Read Peter Matthiessen wonderful book on Cranes,
http://www.2think.org/birdsheaven.shtml
Unfortunately, with the continuing and approaching disaster that India is facing, the Cranes will go over the cliff with all other species.
It is so sad homo sapiens are forcing the present mass extinction on the Sub Continent.
Not a stork but certainly one of my familys favorites.
"Brown pelican migration disrupted, birds starving"
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/01/brown-pelican-migration-disrupte...
They looked like B52's when they glide in in a group.
Oh well...
spent some time with a friend several days ago watching a large flock of approximately 1000 Sand Hill Cranes in a large field just north of the cody scarp. Awesome site. Reports are that they had a very good year and their numbers are up.
http://rareseeds.com/
Whether you love or hate Monsanto et al the fact is we as a species are painting ourselves into a corner with the homogenization of the food we eat. Not only are we increasingly concentrating specific crops in specific geographic areas, shipping to a world market, we are growing fewer and fewer varieties.
Macdonalds likes a certain variety of potato for instance and since half the US production of potatoes goes to fries and chips, guess what variety gets grown? Peruvian farmers grew 100s of varieties of potatoes - ever hear of the Peruvian Potato Famine?
There is good news, at least here in the States. Seed companies have seen demand for fruit and vegetable seeds shoot through the roof. And companies specializing in "heritage" seeds are rapidly running out of product to sell. People are looking at growing their own locally and regionally, and are very concerned about genetically modified products. It's a small start, but a good one.
Even some of the heritage varieties are loosing some of their genetic diversity since they mostly originate from one or two suppliers per variety. Some people participate in seed swaps that help diversify the gene pools of some of these heritage crops:
http://www.seedswaps.com/
A friend is active in swapping seeds. He says that sometimes he'll get some of his own variety back, after a few generations somewhere else, and the variety will have changed a bit from his original strain. This ongoing natural diversification will never occur with GE seeds. Nature has its own way of breeding in resilience.
Exactly! Baker Creek (rareseeds.com) has swaps too. The first store was down the road from me in MO but they've opened a store in Peteluma recently for all you folks who didn't run away from CA. ;^)
Also http://www.seedsavers.org/
The problem in the Irish potato famine was that the Irish were completely reliant on on particular variety of fast-growing but very low quality potato - basically one more suitable for feeding pigs than people. When the potato blight hit, it hit that one particular variety very hard.
When I was there the Peruvians were growing about 900 different varieties of potatoes, and complaining that they had lost a lot of the old varieties. They used to grow thousands of different types of potatoes. I have to say that their potatoes were extremely tasty. Far, far more flavorful than anything you'll find at McDonald's. You do have to be careful, though. Many of the exotic varieties are poisonous.
The Peruvians know how to detoxify these potatoes, but the average consumer would need a bit of training. They're something like mushrooms - you have to know what you can eat and what you can't, and how to prepare it. People who didn't know any better have been known to poison themselves eating Peruvian potatoes.
How do they detoxify potatoes? Is it similar to the meothod used for cassava?
No it's not like cassava. The method involves freeze-drying the potatoes, which is relatively easy to do in the dry, high-altitude conditions of the Andes. Here's an article from the International Potato Center (Centro Internacional de la Papa) explaining how to detoxify potatoes.
I don't think the problem was the quality of the Irish spud circa 1840, but it's genetic narrowness. I believe that the Irish population was descended from less than a dozen individuals.
My post was inspired heavily by Fukuoka.
The hybrid seeds created in Philipines by the IRRI aren't standing the just-onsetting ravages of climate change. I did nothing special in my farm - all I used was a local native variety. It has seen a damage, but it has survived and given me a yield.
Like darwin so beautifully put it: "Man selects for his own good; Nature only for that of the being she tends".In my own farm, I was enlightened by the spotting of a "weed" that looked in every possible way like a rice plant. It was just natural selection, albeit slower and a "visually tricky one" because the selection pressure came "visually" (by people noticing the weed and picking it out; what was left behind, was the hard-to-catch ones).
I believe, the wisdom is in accepting, as a species, that we have limits. Complexity can overwhelm. It is this wisdom I see embedded in the learnings of the ancient people. By no means do I wish to indicate that the ancient peoples' general "way of life" must the guiding principle for us too. This post was just about agriculture. Today, we know a lot more than what they (the ancient people) did and don't need redundant religions and rituals. But with that knowledge (and power) we seem to have become this arrogant species with the new distorted "belief" that Technology and our ability to tackle problems is more than blind nature's ability to change stability in so many different ways. They (the ancient people) seem to have understood their limitations better than the arrogant bunch we are today.
As someone else has already pointed out, Guns, Germs and Steel is a great book on this topic.
So, to me: Permaculture seems like the best alternative given our predicament. I think Science is the best tool man has in understanding the world around him. Its the *application* of science where greed ends up painting a rosy picture of the end results. "Agri science" is, in that sense, not a science. Its an application of our (limited) knowledge of how plants grow without understanding the effect of everything on everything. We could possibly never know the effect of everything on everything, in the first place! :)
Ah! I asked about this above, before reading this far down the thread.
Again, wonderful post.
India gained some useful culture from the British, but the British gained far more from India.
One of my great uncles was in the 'Indian Service' but went native and brought his Indian wife back to the UK in the 1930s. I still do not know which civil service tradition was the source, but the Indian beaurocracy is second to none. A simple cash withdrawal, which an ATM machine completes in 20 seconds, took 2 hours and six members of staff in a rural Indian bank. Including the inevitable accounting error.
The UK has, until now, largely kept GM products out of our country. There was such a huge media backlash a decade ago to the Monsanto approach to GM that the major supermarket chains followed customer demand and eradicated most GM products from their shops. This line in the sand is slowly being crossed as a new generation of consumers forget, and the corporate lobbyists offer ever more lucrative 'consultancies' to retiring politicians and civil servants.
Many of my friends who are biochemists have consistently hated the Monsanto business model.
I am sorry to say that in my direct experience female education in itself is not sufficient to control population. Modern Indian women, at least those I meet in the UK, are extremely well educated - far better than the UK average - but the women I have met are still subject to strong social control over their adult lives and fertility. They are simply expected to give up their careers to become mothers and use their education to teach their children at home.
I fear that the damage has been done in India. The population has been allowed to grow beyond sustainable levels, and it will fall back as hunger and disease once again become widespread in the near future. Climate change will be a harsh reminder of the perils of industrialisation. The new middle class will disappear as rapidly as it appeared in last few decades.
However, I expect a century from now, India will still be a strong and cohesive country and culture. It will have a much smaller population, but the great famine will simply be another chapter in their very long history.
An excellent perspective, one that is also echoed in important documentaries such as the Future of Food and Fresh, to name just two. Thank you Suraj (and Gail) for this article.
I think the fundamental problem with rejecting nitrogen fertilizers and genetically modified crops is that India really does not have the option to do so. It already has over a billion people and by the middle of the century will have passed China to become the world's most populous country.
Indian does not have the farmland to feed that number of people UNLESS it uses nitrogen fertilizers and genetically modified crops. If it doesn't do so, the surplus population will starve to death.
Now, some people here would argue that letting them starve to death would be better, but I think a more humane solution would be to let them all live on genetically modified food produced with nitrogen fertilizers.
Those of you who disagree may now hold hands and sing Kumbaya while the less fortunate starve to death. Thank you.
I don't believe there is any solid evidence that GM technologies increase yields. The inserted genes are primarily used for pest/weed control issues, but these aren't working terribly well, at least in the U.S. where the USDA keeps data: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2009/1221/More-herbicide-use-report...
So, we are left with standard breeding techniques to increase yields, and also probably newer genome mapping to augment standard breeding. Another caveat is that yields don't even need to increase to "feed everybody." The FAO STATS database clearly shows that plenty of food is grown now. Distribution/equity issues are the tricky part, and GM/Green Revolution technologies tend to exacerbate, not reduce, those problems.
The nitrogen fertilizer issue may be more crucial, but nitrogen is only one potentially limiting nutrient so that plays out after a while anyhow. After all, if you are adding a bunch of nitrogen to increase yields many other nutrients are being depleted at a faster rate. And while nitrogen can be naturally replaced from the air, these others can't.
No, genetically modified crops do increase yields by allowing farmers to use relatively cheap and non-toxic non-specific herbicides like Roundup (glyphosate) instead of more toxic but less effective weed-killers like 2-4-D. They also allow them to use fewer toxic pesticides to control insects. The alternatives are to use more toxic herbicides and pesticides, or accept lower crop yields.
Nitrogen is only one of the nutrients that plants need, but it is the one that is most likely to constrain crop yield in third-world countries. The others are less likely to be in short supply, and are easier to replace.
We're growing enough food to feed third world countries because we have all this modern technology. For example, one of my nephews, farming in Canada, has 640 acres in peas. He's growing them to sell to India, and he has a high-tech computer-controlled combine specially designed to harvest peas. I mentioned this to someone who just came back from India, and he said, "Oh, that's where all those bags of Canadian peas came from".
You are missing one of the most important alternatives: organic agricultural techniques.
Organic farming can feed the world, U-M study shows
Overview of Cover Crops and Green Manures
Organic Outperforms Conventional in Climate Extremes
This report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is a good review:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/ai781e/ai781e00.pdf
Nitrogen is ca. 80% of the atmosphere. The world is suffering from the over use of artificially produced nitrogen and the data shows that biological fixation is sufficient to maintain modern crop yields while not causing so much water and air pollution.
Trust in good biology.
I like it! Gives new meaning to green backs...
The trouble with "organic agricultural techniques" is that the phrase doesn't actually mean anything. The word "organic" in reality means "of or pertaining to an organism", and that basically describes all agriculture. Many people think there are some sort of standards, but "organic" farming just means whatever the marketer thinks it should mean. "New", "improved", and "organic" are just marketing buzzwords.
From the Wikipedia article organic food, "Most certifications allow some chemicals and pesticides to be used, so consumers should be aware of the standards for qualifying as 'organic' in their respective locales"... "The USDA does not inspect organic farmers. Organic food not grown in the US is not inspected by anyone. The labeling of organic food grown outside of the US is based on the farmer's word."
You obviously do not know anything about organic agriculture inspection and certification;
I agree with the above poster that the word "organic" is misused by the movement of that name. The name is an absurdity on the face of it.
I know something about trying to gain "organic" certification:
We discovered that if we wanted to raise livestock "organically," we would have to agree to eschew conventional medicine for "homeopathy" and "herbal remedies." You can't even use Bag Balm on cows' teats. You can shove garlic cloves down a cow's throat, but you can't use antibiotics.
In the garden we must discard the idea of using ANY "synthetic" pesticides, regardless of the dosage, the rate of application, or the EIQ rating of the pesticide. Even when thoroughly tested and with a long history of causing no ill effects in consumers, conventional pesticides are "unclean."
On the other hand, pesticides deemed "organic" or "natural" are allowed to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis; so, for example, "organic" Pyganic (from chrysanthemums) is OK (even though it kills bees and requires more applications than conventional pesticides), but Rotenone (from jicama plant) is declared "unclean" because it cause Parkinsons-like symptoms in rats at high doses. Never mind that the "natural" tannins in tea are carcinogenic, the "natural" solanine in potatoes is toxic, and the "natural" methyl glyoxal in coffee is a mutagen.
The selective chemophobia among the "organics" set is so strong that a rototiller taken off the farm and borrowed for use on a non-certified farm must be thoroughly rinsed with water before it can be put in service again on sanctified ground.
Other absurdities: "synthetic" "fertilizers" --- meaning, for example, water-soluble versions of phosphorus --- are verboten, but for some reason rock phosphate --- a mined, depleting resource --- is OK.
The usual certified organic rap about the unacceptable nature of "synthetic" products (besides the alleged poisonous qualities) is that they increase dependence on fossil fuels. However, these same certifying agencies have nothing to say about the acres of plastic films used on greenhouses, the miles of plastic hosing used in irrigation systems, or the swaths of plastic mulch used on row crops. (Don't even get me started on fuel use on "organic" farms!)
"Studies" showing that "organic farming can feed the world" have nothing to say about how much more land it would take to grow the same amount of food that could be grown conventionally, what the crops are or what the growing conditions are, or, more importantly, how much more labor it takes to employ "organic" methods.
People in favor of composting (I'm one of them --- with cows we have plenty of "natural organic" matter) --- usually don't even think to consider that the organic matter they're using represents sheer acreage, whether it's leaves or mulch hay. You're literally piling one acre on top of another.
"Organic" standards don't consider how utterly dependent on conventional farming they are when they allow stores, cafeterias, and restaurants to dump their wastes into certified compost piles. How much of these eggshells, coffee grounds, and plant wastes are grown conventionally? Probably close to 100%.
I'm no fan of conventional, industrial agriculture, but it works, (too well), and with 6.8 billion people on the planet, we're stuck with it to the bitter end.
FARMING is unsustainable, period. It grows humans.
I suggest we employ independent farming until die-back commences. Methods are to be evaluated apart from ideologies and employed on a case-by-case basis.
We used fungicides for the first time last year, and I'm glad we did because all the organic farmers around us lost their entire tomato crops to late blight, whereas we got a modest harvest.
I can't for the life of me see why this is surprising to you at all. Are you aware of the effects of antibiotics in terms of drug-resistant diseases, for starters?
Again, you are surprised at a well-established policy that has a well-defined list of what is or isn't allowed. There is a mechanism for approval of items not currently on the list.
1. You most certainly DO seem to be a fan of industrial ag.
2. You seemed to miss a link I had just above your reply which refutes your claim (which you provide no support for). Organic farming can feed the world, U-M study shows (you obviously didn't read it). Now you can say "I've seen struggles in some organic farms around me, so that proves organic can't work" all you like, but your tiny exposure to organic methods does not give you a background by which you can make broad sweeping claims.
Again, no presentation of findings or evidence, just an unsupported opinion.
You're funny! The following quote comes from the very website you cite:
The "logic" of the "organics" movement is: "Mis-use of antibiotics causes resistance; therefore, ALL antibiotics are prohibited. This is plain stupidity.
Thanks again for the entertaining "source"! "Well-defined lists" and "mechanisms" mean nothing! It is the very example of the error ("selective chemophobia") I mention: declarations, by fiat, of "clean" and "unclean" substances, with no rational basis.
Not only did I read it, my comment responded to it. Name one place in the article that the issues I list are refuted concretely with data: "how much more land [that includes ALL outside inputs] it would take to grow the same amount of food that could be grown conventionally, what the crops are or what the growing conditions are, or, more importantly, how much more labor it takes to employ 'organic' methods." That article is itself an example of a raft of "broad, sweeping" and unsupported claims.
As for your objection to my claim that "FARMING is unsustainable, period": please cite an era in human history when improved farming techniques decreased population growth and maintained it at a sustainable level. Farming grows people!
I notice your conspicuous silence on such "organics" absurdities as homeopathy, herbal remedies, ignorance of dosages for "chemicals," the incoherence in their lists of approved and unapproved off-site imports, and the use of plastics.
Finally, my "tiny exposure to organic methods" includes fifteen years of gardening "organically" before I became disillusioned with it, AND three years of working at an organically-certified farm.
Those who know me know that I thoroughly enjoy working there and that my objections concern the certifying organizations who put the farmers through this crap, not the hard workers on the farms themselves.
The context there is 'humans' not 'livestock'.
What level of antibiotics in animals is appropriate? They are not required, therefore most organic operations only use them when an animal needs that level of intervention, and the animal is taken out of the organic inventory.
A broad and unsupported pronouncement.
Come now, it's right there in the article;
"In developing countries food production could double or triple using organic methods"
"Researchers from U-M found that in developed countries yields almost were equal on organic and conventional farms."
"They found that planting green manures between growing seasons provided enough nitrogen to farm organically without synthetic fertilizers."
"...new findings which refute the longstanding assumption that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population."
I wouldn't be surprised if more workers were required, though with high unemployment, I don't see how increasing the number of jobs is an issue.
And so you have gardened for a number of years; more people should! How big a garden, out of curiosity? Raised bed or row crops? Any cold frames or greenhouses? Companion planting? Rotation of beds by crop family?
And what kind of crops or livestock are you raising at the farm. Is the farm currently certified or is it trying to obtain certification?
We're too small to consider certification. We sell to neighbors and friends. We investigated "organic" techniques because we thought it would be "sustainable" and "right."
Wrong!
It's nice to be rid of that straight jacket....
So because you failed, you think organic methods are inherently wrong for everyone else?
Let's accept it folks: Food is nature. Nature is driven by a _lot of complex factors_. The "modern methods" is a heavily influenced by an "industrial mindset" - where the individual worker needs to focus on a few "reduced views of reality" - whether its about making a car or growing a crop. Industrial farming, that way, is a far more easier, convenient way of farming. No disagreements from me on this.
But nature is inherently unpredictable. It is quite sad to hear that your attempt (or the stories you might have heard about) might have failed. However, there are a few principles which when understood makes us clearly realize that the modern method is not likely destined for success. I think most Permaculture books get you started in the same way. The recently published http://futurescenarios.org/ by Bill Mollison of the permaculture fame has a good description of "why not modern methods".
You've misunderstood. OUR attempts here at the farm have not failed. We do quite well raising our own food with a mix of conventional and traditional techniques. As I mentioned, we even sell a little surplus to neighbors and friends.
We've investigated the "permaculture" movement and find it full of abstractions and pleas to buy books. We are meat-and-potatoes people here.
There are no secrets to agriculture. The techniques have been around for centuries. NO method or philosophy is going to mitigate the mathematical certainty of population die-back.
In the meantime, I plan to enjoy myself growing stuff the way I see fit.
This is a nonsense, and surely requires an edit on Wikipedia. I suppose that the author was referring specifically to food imported into the USA and sold as "organic" there, and means that nobody in the US inspects or certified it; but this is not stated (the author clearly has an agenda, to put it mildly). To state that the organic status is "based on the farmer's word" is downright weird.
If you're interested, Guy, you may wish to know that any organic food imported into the US (or anywhere else) which comes from the European Union, must comply with EU inspection and auditing procedures, which (I have no doubt) are considerably more rigorous than those in force in the US.
... and in India, there are various state-certified organic agencies - some states lack them. In my own state, its an eye-wash designed to systematically kill Organic farming.
Completely agree with everything you say here. But what you're talking about is tangential to the discussion here :)
Anyway, to address your reported "problem", here's the solution:
Switch to local produce - you'll know "who that farmer is" and the "word of mouth" will do the job. Use the wisdom of our collective! The problem you so complain about, is solved. Local sellers need to be more transparent or risk losing business.
Large agri-corporations, by the nature of how Corporations work, tend to deceive people through irrational tactics such as lobbying. Small sellers can't.
... and the problem of transportation shocks in a post-peak world while continuing "modern farming techniques" has not been addressed, btw. The solution is to go local and have more people doing the machine's job at scales achievable by using people.
A 'more Humane solution' is to realize that if you're in a pinch, you have to deal with BOTH the Rock and the Hard place, Rocky.
There is clearly a compelling need to revitalize their soils instead of just 'going along to get along..' with the GM and the Artificial Nutrients, the modern water-wasting approaches to AG, and crops that are probably ill-suited and oversimplified for these lands. There is ALSO a need to deal with overpopulation, before it deals with you..
Riding the middle-lines of these pressing needs won't be easy.. but marginalizing the complex answers by tying them to a caricature of the Hippies and the Greens is one of the kinds of 'simplistic answers' that will help noone, and keep people divided.
'Someone's Dying, Lord, Come by Here!.. Oh, Lord, Come by here'
Bob
(And when I say 'walk that middle line', it means that I'm not advocating a sudden crash-stop of whatever Green Revolution systems are in place.. transitions take time and a lot of careful application..)
Well Said Johkul.
As I mentioned upthread we collectively have the tiger by the tail and noideas , really, how to turn loose.But it is obvious that having traveled as far down the green revlution road as she has, India cannot now just abruptly reverse course.
My personal guess is that barring some positive Black Swans on the energy, birth rate, and agrcultural fronts, a crash, and a very hard one, is inevitable in India and several more developing countries.
Of course Black Swans by definition don't arrive very often or on a schedule.
I don't think we can afford to turn our backs on genetic engineering, although it has in my estimation been somewhat of a disappointment so far in terms of results and a disaster in terms of corporate ownership and control.
But the potential upside is tremendous.
We need a major reform of our patent laws and some tough new regulations and policies to rein in big ag rather than a ban on genetically modified food species in my humble opinion , as this route seems the likeliest way to wiggle thru the coming bottleneck with the fewest disruptions, which might just range all the way up to the third and maybe the last Big One.(Of course this is only one aspect of the larger problem , and other new policies are needed in respect to energy, population, and so on.)
Once past the bottleneck , if we successfully negotiate it, our grandchildren can reevaluate such policies.
The Indians are not caught between a rock and a hard place, but they are definitely short of options. Not having overpopulation is not one of those options because they already are badly overpopulated.
Water is not generally a problem given the Indian monsoons, but they do have to maintain their soil fertility, and if they did not have nitrogen fertilizers, a lot of them would be starving to death even as we speak. The "green revolution" was mostly about putting more nitrogen into the soil to replace what had already been depleted.
Bob who?
'Bob' was just me, signing off.
Kumbaya is an old hymn, "Come by here", brought to Africa by missionaries and somewhat mispronounced.. or so I heard somewhere, but the rest of the lyrics tend to support the story.
Population would be the rock, and Agricultural limits, be it water over here or soil depletion over there or distribution somewhere else.. these are surely hard places aren't they? Or, to say that the over-production of green-revolution produce enabling a population overshoot as the 'equal and opposite' reaction to feeding this resulting population NEXT YEAR.. it just such a 'self-fulfilling catastrophe'.
Bob
Water is not generally a problem given the Indian monsoons
Sorry to say, there is no such thing called "The Indian Monsoon". In the south, its 1200 mm of rainfall over a very short month. How is Monsanto and co devising smart techniques to use lesser water?
Plus, there is a very subtly different point I'm trying to make here through this post:
Growth oriented anything suits businesses. Solutions oriented businesses make a meagre living. Resilience is a completely different dimension. Resilience is about minimizing exposure to Black Swans (including positive ones, yes). But something as vital as food must be resilient than "designed to scale", no?
Monsanto's own methods seem to be sitting on large risks: They assume that the factory farming equipment needed to spray pesticides or process food at _that scale_ will not be affected by the inevitable decline of cheap oil.
I got my information from the Wikipedia articles, Climate of India and Monsoon which certainly imply that India has a monsoon. They say that if it was not for the monsoon rains, India would never be able to grow enough food to feed 1 billion people.
My relatives are farming in an area of Canada which receives less than 400 mm of rainfall per year, which is considerably less than most of India. Canada has a lot fewer people than India to feed, though, so some of the crops they are growing are exported to India. One of my nephews has 2.5 square kilometres of land growing peas for sale to India. That's just part of his farm, though.
Many of the crops they are growing could not be grown on the Canadian prairies 100 years ago because it is too cold and dry for most plants. Most of the crops they grow now are a product of modern technology - plants that have been developed for more cold and drought tolerance than they normally have.
Monsanto may not be interested in developing plants that can survive with less rainfall than current crops, but other people are.
Please read something by Vandana Shiva, before you hurt yourself. "Green Revolution" crops are 30-50% more water intensive. Water tables are dropping precipitously. Nitrogen fertilizer is too soluble, runs off too easily, turns to nitrates in drinking water and creates dead zones at the deltas. Water is clearly an issue.
I'd have to second Jason's statement there rocky, with 15 years of GM the promises of Gm have not held out, many farmers in South America are returning to conventional varities. Don't believe the hype.
And again hunger/famine is a political/distribution issue as opposed to lack of food.
Taking my home country as a case in point, after the irish were forcefully moved to the west - "to hell or to connaught" the "lumper" potato as it was called was one of the only things which would grow in our wild west.
This monoculture coupled with the much wetter climate compared to Peru spelt disaster..
We had a series of famines before this as did parts of England, but this was due to ye old english using Ireland as a food colony more than anything else.
Ireland was still exporting food as millions died...
Well Cousin, (long lost)
We are many of us now well established in the mountians of america and fortified with a little Scots blood as well and we will never so long as memory serves see our food exported from here -not until they pry our empty guns out of our cold dead hands.
The thing about the potato was that it grew much better in Ireland than any other crop. Prior to the arrival of the potato blight, the population of Ireland was doubling about once every 20 years. However, once the potato blight arrived, it all came crashing to a halt. The surplus population either emigrated or starved to death.
Birth control would have been the ideal solution, but blight-resistant potatoes would also have helped. You realize, don't you, that there are genetically modified blight-resistant potatoes. (Oh, my God, no, not that, not something that's UNNATURAL!)
Now let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya as we slowly starve to death. Don't touch the potatoes because they might kill you.
The best lands in Ireland were taken over for the raising of beef and pork for English dinner tables. The potato grew reasonably well on marginal soils, so it gradually took over more and more acre left to the Irish, supplanting grains and dairy. Indeed, the potato was introduced into Ireland in the 1700s as a gentry garden crop.
Food exports actually increased during the famine of the 1840's, deliveries from farms guarded by English soldiers.
Cathal Póirtéir, The Great Irish Famine, Mercier Press (1995), ISBN 1 85635 111 4, pp. 19–22
The major cause of the famine was the Irish preference for one variety of potato, or a mono-potato crop:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/agriculture_02
Had they been growing several varieties, the famine likely would have been much less severe. Today our hubris is to eliminate evolution and genetic diversity entirely from our primary food sources via GE crops and cloned livestock. That's just f 'in crazy.
For how long will synthetic fertilizer be an option? One hundred years? Two hundred years? Certainly not a long time measured against the duration of civilization on the sub-continent.
So when is it the time to 'reject' this fossil fuel related dependence? Unlike the proverbial pig, time flies.
As for GM crops, you've bought the bullshit. Don't feel badly, a lot of intelligent people have done so. The manipulation of opinion is the leading modern art.
Many less fortunate are starving every day. Have you gotten down on bended knee and petitioned our democratic dictators to deal with the income/distribution issues that enable this ongoing waste of human life?
You have! Great! Now you can insult others with your Kumbaya comments.
How long until the sun burns out? Come on, if all else fails we can use solar power to produce fertilizer. Or we can modify the plants to fix their own nitrogen.
No, I can read the scientific literature with the best of them. My relatives raise GM crops. My ex-wife used to do DNA analysis on people for a living. If you want to know what is really going on, I could probably find out where's she's living now and you could talk to her about it (better you than me).
Next time I see them, I'll talk to them about it. I do hobnob with politicians from time to time, you know.
Yes, that's true, I can. But note the Wikipedia article, "... more recently it is also cited or alluded to in satirical, sarcastic or even cynical ways that suggest blind or false moralizing, hypocrisy, or naively optimistic views of the world and human nature."
People persist in suggesting naive and impractical solutions to difficult problems, or want to return to a mythical time (that never existed) when things were easier and simpler, and natural solutions prevailed. Things have never been easy or simple, and natural solutions resulted in a lot of people starving to death. The fact is that we do not really have a lot of options any more, and if we want to feed the world for the rest of the century, we need to use all the technology we can.
As a working and technically literate farmer I second Rocky in everything he says so far today.
There aren't any simple solutions and having committed ourselves to the path we are on currently, we have no choice but to ride it out in the short and middle term.
Look at this thing like a ski jump-once you start down the hill there is absolutely no hope of stopping and backing up.If you live over the landing, however, you have the option of not jumping again.
The best we can hope for now is a relatively peaceful transition over a long period of time to a more sustainable system of feeding ourselves.Any and everything that might help in the short term will have to be used and it is still likely that people are going to perish in very large numbers in some places.
The various solutions put forth by gungho supporters of certain technologies or movements such as organic ag, transition towns, and so forth can go a long way towards padding the landing site and maybe enlarging the neck of the bottle but history and common sense dictate that in and of themselves they will not solve the problems we face now.They might however enable early adopters to live and even thrive as individuals or local communities, and in the event of a long slow decline,which now seems likely to me in the US at least,these kinds of change may work near miracles.
But there is not much if any hope they will be adopted by more than a very small percentage of the population until and unless such changes are forced by circumstances.By then if the decline is fast time for adoption on the large scale will have run out.
OFM, please see the links I provided above, which contradict the claims by RMG.
I farm every day and I go out and look over organic operations from time to time and use some of the techniques myself.
I know about the regulations you mention and they are real- but Rocky is still correct in terms of the big picture and the world in general.The typical consumer has no real idea what is used and not used on a typical organic farm.Fertilizers are still hauled in.Tractors and insecticides are still used.Paper bags and boxes and all sorts of ff based consumables are every where you look.The fertilizers that aren't mined and hauled ala greensands are almost invariably robbed from a nearby conventional farm in the form of rain spoiled hay or livestock wastes.
The biggest not quite expressed lie of all is the implication that organic farms are sustainable without outside inputs.But whatever leaves must be replaced, and we do not as yet have any real solutions as to getting all that NO 1 AND NO2 bathroom treasure back to the farms.Until then it will be hauled in from somewhere as needed.
I had a rather amusing conversation a few years ago with an inspector from the health dept concerning the difference between a nitrate molecule in ground water in respect to it's origins.
She wanted to lock me up for peeing outside but freely admitted that my cows pour out the same molecules only in many times greater volume-but that's perfectly ok-apparently because cows are hard to toilet train.I expect she is working on a solution to THAT problem and will get promoted if she succeeds. ;)
Now I am on record here in favor of pushing the movement towards organic methods as hard as the research and practical considerations will allow, and we have learned over the years how to reduce our own off farm inputs substantially and to get by ok with a lot less fertilizer and pesticides than formerly per unit of production.
But there is a huge and growing (in my opinion ) gap between organic reality and the public perception of the same-the term is rapidly being captured by marketing interests and will soon be another corporate slave word, with regulations enacted not for the good of agriculture and the public , but for the competitive advantage of people selling products narrowly tailored to meet the arbitrary descriptions of the goods.
Mark these words.If bau continues as usual, within ten or fifteen more years the people who market organics will own the regulatory appartus in the same fashion as the oil, banking, insurance, and real estate industries own the agencies that regulate THEM.Most of the people who buy the stuff wil get a nice warm cozy feeling that the are doing something good for them and the world but it won't necessarily be so.
Then I guess the rest of us will have to put cigarette type warning labels on our produce. ;)
There is a huge downside to organics that is seldom honestly presented to the general public.Some day soon I am going to get tired of playing underdog's advocate for religion and go on a tear for awhile in defense of farming as usual. ;)
Well. I obviously didn't scroll down to your comment, oldfarmermac, before I posted mine above! We're on the same wavelength, apparently.
Just wait till word gets out about the "huge downside" to organic farming among those who are paying up to 100% more for "organic" products!
I would only disagree with this statement:
Why call the methods "organic" at all?
I've never heard this nor saw it strongly implied. Livestock operations need hay, for example, from somewhere, and few farms are using horses to do this (even then there is a dependency on harnesses, sickle-bar mowers, tedders, rakes, balers, etc). Some turn of the (previous) century farms were well rounded (crops AND livestock), and could recycle manure onto the fields, but larger organic operations today tend to focus on crops OR livestock, infrequently both. Those who are beginning to practice more of a well-rounded homesteading/permaculture are able to recycle the manure from their livestock (our garden is remarkably productive).
I am of the same mindset. Even if there were an all-ecompassing push to change, it would still take more than a decade to transition. And we are still learning, though much can be applied from techniques of German farmers from centuries ago. Spread of disease and pests on a global basis certainly does complicate matters, of course.
The previous administration softened up the certification requirements so that factory ag could move in. Having a former Monsanto executive (Ann Veneman) as Secretary of Agriculture (whose top aides also came from industrial ag) certainly moved things in the direction you mention.
LOL! You figure someone who is an inspector from the health department might know that in most cases urine expelled directly from the bladder of a healthy individual is sterile. Right?
I "mark my territory" every day, especially around the chicken pens to deter the coyotes. I can think of no more "organic" way to discourage preditors. Several times I've seen a coyote run up to a chicken pen, sniff my "spot", lift his leg and run away. Works for deer too!
Some people use lion or tiger urine for that purpose - to keep the predators and/or deer away. I'm pretty confident a whiff of big cat urine would send your average coyote or deer high-tailing it for the hills.
One person I know was an innovator in using donkeys to keep the coyotes away from the sheep. Donkeys get along well with sheep, but if they see a coyote they will try to kill it. It's more reliable than using dogs, because you can be confident the donkey will not develop a taste for sheep itself.
Yes, it sounds like she is completely unclear on the subject: It's just a little more urea fertilizer on the crops.
Eskimos used to use urine to wash their dishes (some of them probably still do). Well, where else are you going to get warm, running water when you live in an igloo?
Hi oldfarmermac,
I grew up on a farm, many of my relatives are still farmers, and I find most people who are not farmers are quite naive about how farms are operated. Too few people have any connection to any real-life farms any more, and most city people have an idealized view of how they should operate. The people who are the biggest promoters of "organic" farming and "natural" food are among the most naive. To a large extent, "organic" food is just another marketing phrase.
Also, I have a degree in chemistry, so the word "organic" brings back bad memories of the organic chem lab: Walking around with yellow fingers for months because some chemical reacted with my skin, people pulling the emergency shower ring because they've spilled something "organic" on themselves and its eating holes in their skin, people passing out from the fumes from their experiment, lab assistants yelling, "Get that stuff away from me, I want to have children some day!", alarm bells ringing and the air slowly filling with nasty-smelling smoke because the Sulfur Group had another explosion. The word "organic" has different connotations for different people, and mine are less positive than most.
On the other hand, if I have any doubts about a chemical substance, I can just survey the recent research and read the most relevant papers, so I tend to develop my own opinions about what is safe and what is dangerous. The popular press doesn't have a clue what they are talking about, so you can't count on them to give you any useful information.
As a consumer (and having done some organic chemistry), I frankly don't want to spend my life researching the chemicals in the supermarket foods I buy, to try to work out how harmful they are likely to be (this would require me to have an exhaustive list of the chemicals used to grow and process the foods, which in any case is not available).
However, when I buy organic foods (in the European Union at least), I can be confident that they have been grown and processed using a narrowly-defined range of inputs and processes. I can easily access the information when I have doubts; and I have eliminated hundreds, thousands of variables that may (or may not) have a deleterious effect on my health, or on the future health of my children.
I grant that this is a very conservative approach. It increases the cost of foods, on a like for like basis. The cost increase is actually mitigated by the restrictions on choices (there are many fewer varieties of organic foods available), so it evens out for me.
This is a very conservative approach, probably not for everyone.
But I'm very conservative about my health, and about the health of my children.
And how do you know that?
WARNING: All "natural, organic" foods contain toxins, mutagens, and carcinogens.
Your reference is from the "American Council on Science and Health". From SourceWatch;
"Shortly after its founding, ACSH abandoned even the appearance of independent funding. In a 1997 interview, Whelan explained that she was already being called a "paid liar for industry," so she figured she might as well go ahead and take industry money without restrictions."
"The Washington Post identified ACSH as "an industry-friendly group whose board member Betsy McCaughey helped set off the "death panels" frenzy" in the 2009 health care reform debate. last year."
Actually, I'm somewhat unusual in that I do read the labels on food containers and research the safety of all their ingredients. None of my friends do. If they have any questions they just ask me, knowing that if I don't know the answer I will research it and find out.
And you will get the official European Union political solution to the issue, which may or may not be more accurate than the one the official American political solution to the issue. You have to realize that the European politicians and bureaucrats have their own agendas, as do the American politicians and bureaucrats.
They may have a narrowly defined range of inputs and processes, but that doesn't necessarily make it safer, and it usually makes it less efficient.
Thank you for patronizing. You have me confused with a naive person perhaps.
European institutions in general produce a lot of norms and regulations, mostly designed to produce a level playing field in commerce. This process is largely driven by big business lobbies (this is so obvious it is hardly worth stating).
Regulations surrounding organic foods are something of an exception. They were done from the bottom up, by self-organising small producers who created their own certifications. These (French and Germans mostly) are the people who invented and developed the "organic" concept.
Their certification systems were eventually taken over by national authorities (and tampered with and watered down to some extent, but the producers were always vigilant and influential in the process), then normalized on a European level.
I have enough experience of this to have a fair degree of confidence in the results, in terms of certified products.
It's a guarantee of means, not a guarantee of result. Of course. But in an experiment, if you reduce the number of independent variables, you generally constrain the results a lot better.
Efficiency is not the overriding issue. Reliability is the issue.
Rocky
This comment is naive. There are a number of nitrogen fixing plants, used extensively in crop rotation. These evolved naturally (after all, isn't that what evolution is about - adapting to take advantage of resources), and have been selectively bred as whole entities (as opposed to groping in the dark by manipulating DNA with the limited human understanding of how the entire genome of an organism functions). These form a foundation for permaculture, organic farming, etc. We should focus on solutions that are known to work.
If the GMO companies were trying to produce varieties that used less water, were more resilient, that produced long-lasting highly fertile seeds, then it could be a good direction to pursue. But their motive is control of seed sources and profit, hence terminator genes, linking genetic capacities with other products they make (e.g. Roundup-ready + Roundup), SLAPP lawsuits against farmers,.... Companies like Monstanto increase dependence and decrease resilience - i.e. exactly what we don't need.
Yes, but most of the plants you want to grow cannot fix their own nitrogen. Only the pulses do. This is where the custom of alternating cotton with peanuts originated - the cotton takes nitrogen out of the soil, and the peanuts put it back in. However, it's not very efficient compared to nitrogen fertilizers and most cotton growers use fertilizers.
The ideal thing would be cotton that fixed its own nitrogen. Similarly if wheat or rice fixed their own nitrogen it would make for a more efficient, less fertilizer intensive operation.
Monsanto, of course, is trying to make a profit. However, the patent is due to expire on their Roundup-ready soybeans in a few years, followed by their other GM plants. After that, we'll likely see a proliferation of non-Monsanto GM soybeans and other crops spreading around the world.
Yes, but most of the plants you want to grow cannot fix their own nitrogen
Which is why crop rotation with nitrogen-fixing plants that also provide weed-blocking cover is highly beneficial.
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/covercrop.html
You obviously need to understand populations. If you let the current 6.8 bn live, even at a mere 1% growth rate, they'd need 4 more planets. What further "race" against Entropy can technology make? That is all I can say.
Interesting post. I agree with the gist and certainly believe that the way we do agriculture now, both in India and elsewhere, desperately needs to change. I also believe we would all probably be better off if we left Indian agriculture to be sorted out by Indians, with no interference from foreign or transnational companies (and, let's be honest here, we're really talking about Anglo-Saxon firms. Colonialism never really ended, it was just outsourced).
I do have a couple of small quibbles though. I really do believe that we should strive to avoid romanticising our past and creating images of the "noble savage" when we conceptualize how our ancestors went about their business. More often than not, these images of our ancestors being in some kind of mystical balance with the forces of nature are misleading and have little to do with the reality- our ancestors were no less rapacious or greedy than us, they were merely a good deal less numerous and less capable of inflicting their will on the natural world that may make it appear so. Humans have been practicing slash-and-burn ag for millenia, we have been destroying local ecosystems since time immemorial. We should keep in mind that we cannot merely return to old ways of doing things, but rather that we need to deal with ourselves as an intrinsically dangerous and destructive force that must be carefully moderated and regulated.
Secondly, as someone who hacks genomes for a living, I have to take issue with this characterisation:
"a. Bugs: If a Microsoft writes buggy code, they can send a "fix". But what happens when there are "bugs" in the genetically engineered code? How do you fix a plant? Today's genetic engineering methods are still crude. It's not like we insert a nano-particle that reads through the genes and "modifies" the genes. They merely insert some other animal's genes that produces the desired proteins!"
In fact, we do have the ability to "read through" genes, cheaply and easily. Modern, massively parallel deep sequencing methods are astoundingly cheap and fast- see second generation techniques like 454 sequencing and Solexa sequencing. These methods will be supplanted in a few years by third generation technologies which will be able to perform whole-genome sequencing for a few hundred dollars in a period of hours. We also have an extensive range of techniques available to modify genes- contrary to the author's suggestion, it is relatively straightforward in numerous organisms to deliver targeted, specific sequence edits to specific genes. "Merely inserting some other animal's genes" (merely!! hah!!) is now unbelievably trivial- to give an example, I have just finished making a transgenic fish, which, from conception to completion, took approximately one month, and approximately 30 man hours. Delivering specific sequences to a genome is becoming similarly trivial- between homologous recombination-mediated methods and new zinc finger nuclease-mediated methods, we can now introduce specific sequences at specific loci to a vast array of organisms in a few months, and have a viable line ready to go in well under a year.
I appreciate that the author is a software engineer and is probably not up to date on the latest and greatest in transgenesis, but it is, in my opinion, incredibly dangerous to underestimate the power of modern genetic engineering and synthetic biology. We are rapidly getting to the point where very small labs can cheaply produce enormous numbers of highly modified organisms with astounding rapidity. This is, from my point of view, potentially extremely pernicious- as a global society we certainly haven't dealt with the consequences of these advances in any meaningful way. I would encourage the author and readers, therefore, to not take this kind of technology lightly, for I believe it will prove to be far more important in the near future than a characterisation as "crude" and "merely" swapping some genes around might suggest.
Well, back to the bench. Take care, y'all.
I wonder has anyone done a study on the reliance of GM and it's attendant research etc on Oil?
I know from reading Keith akkers magazine that things like IT have a much higher usage than you would think...
I think it's widely underappreciated in biotech how reliant we are on oil. We go through an enormous amount of plastic at the bench and most of our chemicals come from oil-derived feedstocks. There's also the manufacture, transport, and storage of reagents, etc. There are probably alternatives for most things, and biotech by comparison to other types of engineering is pretty cheap. As far as our reagents go, if necessary we're able to manufacture a lot of the stuff we use in-house, but it would really slow things down. I'm not sure, but I don't think anyone's ever done a systematic analysis of what an oil supply disruption would mean for molecular biologists.
That's quite an understatment. No worries though, I'm quite comfortable placing the world's genetic heritage and future in the good hands of Monsanto. I'm sure they'll have our best long-term interests at heart!
I am more worried about terrorism plauges.
Monsanto is one big, fat piece of the puzzle to be sure, but it's worth keeping in mind that they have a handful of GMO products that were mostly developed decades ago. The sheer number and variety of GMO crops coming through the pipeline (both in academia and in the nimbler biotech firms) makes Monsanto's product lineup look pretty quaint. Many of these are being developed for ostensibly good reasons- drought resistance and salt tolerance are two important traits that many people are spending a lot of time focusing on, in an effort to have crops that will be viable in a post-climate-change world- but profit motive has a way of skewing these things. These GMO crops are probably going to be a go-to for a lot of governments as climate change progresses. We live in a world where a product that Monsanto spent hundreds of millions on R&D for in the 90s can now be developed for $100k in a garage. Our regulatory structures are way behind the curve here, and there's a lot of potential for Very Bad Things to happen as a result.
Paper Mac, would you care to elaborate?
Hm. I could say a lot on this so I will try not to ramble too much:
We are seeing a democratization of molecular biology and genetic engineering technology as cost comes down. 3rd generation sequencing means the era of personal genomics is at hand, it's actually that cheap. The problem now is processing the data- the bioinfomatics clade of the author's occupational phylum has to catch up with the biology in this case. Likewise, the ability to produce transgenic and knockout organisms is entering reach of any small bioinformatics startup- you can literally order custom organisms made with custom genes, if you like. This means things that I think are unambiguously good (cheap cures for people, the ability to get small amounts of previously oil-derived chemical feedstocks from peppermint plants, etc). But it has associated with it I think basically two major types of risk:
1- the overall quality of practice of genetic engineering will probably remain high, but mistakes will be made and things will get through the regulatory system somehow. Think of how poorly the FDA has done regulating Monsanto. Now imagine lots and lots of small firms submitting products of comparable complexity. A few will cut corners- how well do you think the FDA is going to be able to cope with 1000s of Monsantos submitting requests for product approval? Some simple things might be creating a nasty bacteria that is disposed improperly (ie down the drain) picking up an antibiotic resistance cassette. These cassettes are widely distributed in bacterial extrachromosomal DNA like phage and plasmids in "the environment" as "outside" is sometimes known in molbiolgese. An AB resistance cassette is like a string of antibiotic resistance genes. That would be a major problem if the bug was infectious or did undesireable things to the environment or things living in it. Or someone screws up and uses transposon in a system where it will be mobile, and you end up with a bit of mobile DNA cutting and pasting itself endlessly. I've come up with some pretty bizarre plans for animals myself which I later realized would probably be VBTs- and I've been in the trenches a while! So I can see a bright kid with an M.Sc. and not a lot of supervision making something bad. Probably won't happen a lot, but it might do enough to cause problems. Particularly if you're relying on your new custom peppermint plant to make you some anti-malarials..
2- since I am inherently cynical about the way governments use regulatory agencies, I believe that that government will respond to this enlarged challenge to its regulatory structure not by reforming the relevant regulatory agencies (eg FDA), but rather by strictly limiting the development and use of GMOs (kind of a dumb term imo- whats an unmodified organism? The first one?). BAU continues, massive Ag interests like Monsanto run the show, many PhDs go unemployed. This is a VBT for me, because I like my job, and I also like being able to feed myself and my family. It is also probably a VBT for you if you happen not to like Monsanto very much. It may even be a VBT for the world- Monsanto's mostly about their bottom line, as you may have noticed, and are unlikely to want to meet the needs of those who cannot pay for things like antimalarials. Products that are needed exclusively by poor people will not get made- we will have to wait for wealthy financiers like Bill Gates to fund them. In any case, I really do believe that there are a lot of genuinely Very Good Things that genetic engineering and molecular biology can do for the world. Right now we have a system that enormously favours those rentiers who hold IP like Monsanto over those who want to make useful things for people. Why do you think Craig Venter is making synthetic organisms? If you make it from scratch- the whole goddamn thing is patentable! We live in strange times.
I guess in sum I would say we're probably looking at minor increases in operational risks (the first type) and disasterous increases in regulatory risk (the second type), which means we really have to fix regulatory agencies and fund them properly and so on if we don't want to see either the occasional bad organism or the democratisation of biotech nipped in the bud.
Thanks for that P Mac. A very rough analogy in my mind is nuclear technology. Once the technology gets to a certain point, where it becomes accessible to the un(der)-regulated, the risks increase exponentialy. As FM posted below, another genie is indeed out of the bottle.
When we get to the point that average-intellect, anti-social youths can genetically modify organisms in their basements as easily as they can create computer viruses, the world will become an interesting place.
Paper Mac, thanks for the clarification. I didn't know that we _can edit_ a structure in place. That is quite "cool"! At the same time, scary to think about the potential of leaving this new-found tool to the third chimpanzee! We sure are in for some interesting times ;)
Technology is cool, alright. But, we also very well understand the process of Evolution. We know very well, that by applying Selection pressure, we're essentially engaging in an arms race with nature. As has been shown by the "uncivilized animals", several technically difficult tasks have been solved by blind nature in amazing ways we hardly grasp.
What more proof do we need than the systematic exploitation and "super smart" communication by swarms of ants? People have been talking about "self-healing" for years and I still don't see a "techno-solution" for self-healing. Nature does this left, right and center and is one of the basic tenets of survival.
Will the monkey ever stop fooling around with the pistol?
I know that Round up is used with GM soya but have any other agricultural crops been modified to use with this herbicide?
corn, cotton, sugar beets, wheat
Canola as well. Some of my relatives raise GM canola. Reduces herbicide costs drastically.
Wheat and alfalfa are under development.
The roundup and drought resistance characteristics can, and rumor has it, is transferring to weeds.
What then?
Most of our problems started out as solutions.
You can't really transfer Roundup resistance to weeds, unless they're closely related plants. However, roundup resistant plants can become weeds in their own right. If you get Roundup-resistant canola in your crops, how are you going to get rid of it? You certainly can't use Roundup.
Suraj Kumar ends his somewhat rambling contribution with the following 'American Indian' quote:
Yeah, and yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change and to us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground... zzzz
Yes indeed, and I say unto you, in the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
Welcome to the Chauncey Gardiner fan club. Sorry, good white folks, but this 'quote' belongs to the 'they never said it' category. It's an urban legend, along with Chief Seattle's non-speech of 1855. Invented by some 19the century journalist and subsequently processed and packaged by Hollywood and Disneyland.
By the way, when did ANYBODY ever think that money can be eaten?
The Midas tale has been around for a couple of millennia.
See: also
http://www.wildsnow.com/articles/chief_seattle/chief_seattle.html
Sorry, double posting. WTF?
What strikes me as funny about this discussion here at TOD is that the main justification for herbicide tolerant crops is to reduce the number of passes made by equipment through the field for cultivation - mechanically killing weeds.
The promised result isn't necessarily bigger harvests but bigger profit via less fuel use.
Another claimed benefit is reduced soil compaction from multiple passes by equipment. Where India is concerned, it seems to me they have plenty of folks to pull weeds.
This is the Peak Oil crowd talking you realize. What they're thinking is that the farmer may not be able to afford to buy the fuel to do the extra cultivation passes - hence they won't do them, and the crop yields will be lower.
RockyMtnGuy, with all due respect, I'd like to point out one flaw in the ways of "Modern Agriculture":
The so-called "Agricultural Science" is a scam on the word "Science" because it is an "Application of science". This pseudo-science-motivated-by-businesses looks at the plant, in a hurry, as a self-existing entity. In reality, it can't. The soil serves a great substrate for several services and it is _that knowledge_ that seems lacking based on the direction and approach this pseudo-scientific-agribiz seems to be taking. There is the fundamental flaw. Whoever came up with this "wonderful idea" of spraying "life-support-killing-pesticides" without realizing that nature will quite likely evolve _some species of an unwanted weed_ that will evolve resistance to this pesticide?
If I was given the honour of reviewing this "scientific paper" (was there one ever, btw?), I'd have been, for once, a Proud Indian(sic) who re-invented "Zero" while grading the said "scientist"!
The analogy of the "Modern Agri Science business'" way of growing plants is:
1. Pick a man and put him into the hospital
2. Kill his friends because they might bring germs...
3. Connect him up on Life Support (Glucose is enough, isn't it? Oxygen is sufficient, we believe)
4. Turn on the power of the hospital and hope that he continues to grow.
oh ... did you notice that you forgot to protect his eyes while your Hospital is polluting the air with sulphur?
oh wait, the power won't be enough for all of the men who are now only in hospitals! Should we "hope" that someone will invent power or that God will fuel up the planet with one more "full tank"?
The "Black Swans" you talk about, all seem only negative in the face of this pseudo-scientific scam called "Agricultural Science".
RockyMtnGuy, If you're honestly looking for the truth, you can find it. What's denying you / preventing you from looking can only be found out by you. It is only natural to feel depressed to find that we're in a predicament and that there is no use deluding ourselves. It could occur because of one's vested interests or investments or dependence on income/living or even one's "identity" in society. It might sound depressing initially to understand how your own life will change drastically... but where there is a will, there is a way!
One of the things I like about the USA is the positive attitude of the people in learning from their mistakes! Agri-science is one thing that seems to be conflicting w.r.t. that ideal... but surely many american farmers seem to have realized their mistake and are now moving on to "probably less-yielding, more time consuming" but atleast a reliable way of farming which relies on nature's services. The service of a tree cannot be accurately measured in dollars. Yet, it is now very clear, after having committed some mistakes, that their value is more than what we thought. Given I follow all things related to food on the web, I personally see a big trend in adoption of "organic" for various reasons. This is evident from the increase in demand for native variety seeds, sprouting of several "organic" shops, "organic" discussion forums and even "google search trends" indicate a jump in people's realisation of mistakes from the past). My own (pesticide-free, fertilizer-free but grown-on-a-recuperating-soil) rice produce is already sold out before I could even process the grains :)
On a lighter note: I hypothesize, Mr.Obama was only helplessly crying to the people, when he said "Change We Can!"... he meant to say "Well, because I can't change it sitting at the top here. This stuff is just too deep. So 'we' must change... you know what I mean? like, you guys please figure it out yourselves..."
I believe there is a better way of living that will provide a tolerable lifestyle for my family that does not involve extensive fossil fuel subsidy. But just because I believe in it does not mean others should, or even that it will work, and heck, I’m aiming for stabilization at 1870 levels, which some of you would say isn’t worth it and would rather die.
I strongly suggest that others take this post with great caution. The author has not come up with a formula that will save the world. His ‘solution’ can only work for the minority.
Modern industrial agriculture works. The reason farmers for the past 60 years have converted to the new-fangled technology is because farmers that did not, could not afford to buy land. Survivor bias in farmers has been extreme, with over 50% of each generation forced out of business. Never presume that farmers are idiots.
The reason I believe in ‘voodoo’ farming, is because I do not trust the inherent stability of industrial farming during a period of extended resource, economic, and social decline. I have determined to be prepared to survive the collapse of industrial farming. Otherwise my efforts are moot. Farmers, especially the smart surviving farmers have too much invested in BAU to convert to low or zero input farms. If industrial farming fails, industrial farmers will suffer almost as much as city folk.
Be warned, if you are not personally preparing, ‘voodoo’ farming will not cushion your fall. It is not just overpopulation, but overspecialization that will get you. If you can’t prepare your own food, you’ll be in a pickle. Or you can pray for a miracle….
Equally, you cannot economically compete with industrial farming. As long as it exists, efforts to develop techniques to survive will cause you to experience a competitive disadvantage. Don’t quit your day job.
In my view, those who pretend that alternative farming can compete with industrial agriculture are dangerous quacks. They strive to lead you to a battle you will surely lose. You cannot beat the entrenched system, they will co-op your success and own you. Look at organic farming, and how it has become big ag (Organic = Wal-Mart). No-till is code for, “Spray Monsanto”. If you succeed, they will crush you in the courts, be it suing you for using windblown GMO seed, or killing your cattle due to Mad Cow, Hoof and Mouth, etc (all herds die when theirs are the only one infected). Assume you can’t win and proceed anyway. It is really a liberating perspective.
A successful transition requires early investment in non-viable practices. Any enterprise today that is economically viable is suspect. During a collapse, market farming is no more viable an enterprise than welding or advertising, particularly market farming that does not produce the food you eat.
You can say that a market farmer is establishing the practices that will make transition easier, and that might be so, but only if you have already stockpiled the assets you might require, such as land, an off-grid home, self-fueled transportation, fertile soil and seeds. You know if you have those assets or not. If you don’t have those things, you might want to keep your day job and pay them off, or downsize your ambitions.
As a final note, don’t even think about using debt to finance a farm. I thought for a while that if you had no assets, you might be better off borrowing and defaulting, but it turns out that the banks are politically entrenched, and they’ll take back your farm with a vengeance. You would be much better off with just a few valuable assets that you truly owned, with which you could squat on abandoned land. Or partner up, as WT suggests. The siren song of luxury is a death knell for those of little means. Aim low and pull it off.
Cold Camel
Cold Camel,
You've elucidated your views very well. Do you really think I believe in a "save the world" solution? :) First off all, The current state of Modern Agriculture is a Predicament. It doesn't have a "solution". It requires all of us to wake up to the realization and see how we can adapt to the changing conditions. Those that don't adapt, will perish. As many have rightly commented (here and elsewhere), it is not possible to make that adaptation overnight. There will definitely be new niches and only time will tell how things unfold.
... But, don't you think its stupid to rely on one's basic source of energy - food, from a said bunch of AgriCorporations who all claim to have a "solution to save the world"? How the lure of the profit forces one to deceit and tell lies?
Full agreement here. My comment was not directed at you, but at the masses that take no action. If big brother takes up alternative agriculture, that's fine with them. I was trying to point out that the alternatives might work for us, but not for them.
For years I grasped for straws, trying to figure out a way BAU could continue. Establishing a new neural network takes time past 40. I struggled down the same deadends multiple times, wondering why my numbers were so bleak, when so many others retained optimism, and seemed to have a better grasp of numbers. Humans are social animals, and tend to stay in the pack, I am no exception.
Equally, most of those who broke away from the pack supported illogical arguments. As soon as I discovered the illogic, I'd return to the main herd.
Now I realize that most of the ritual knowledge of the mainstream herd is group think psychotic nonesense. Yet I still have a terribly difficult time fighting not to believe. That's why I take such an argumentative stance. I have to force myself not to believe. I post, because it helps give me clarity, and also because I know there are 100's out there that need the same shock treatment. I feel like I am wandering in the wilderness, surrounded by loonies and sheep. The loonies aren't dangerous, but the sheep are. They are sirens, singing lullabies.
The problem for the sheep is that they can't conceive that everything they know is a lie. Money is just paper. Stuff in the grocery store isn't food. Understand politicians with the opposite filter. The environmental movement isn't about saving nature. Corporations aren't entities. People are sheep. Might is right. Pieces, yes, but the whole picture causes glaze over.
I work with elementary and middle school children part-time sometimes. Their minds are plastic, but they cannot conceive alternate realities. The whole school fell in a swoon for Obama, except for the Bush holdouts, all because of how their parents felt. I gently suggested that neither could solve the countries problems, they looked at me blankly. It did not compute. Now? They don't even think about it.
My next effort is to play Monopoly with some kids, using modern financial rules. Dang, it is so messed up, maybe it isn't possible.
I should interact with high school and college-aged students, that still have plastic minds and can challenge my views in order to build their own. But my contact with them finds them just like the middle school students. If I were their professor or teacher it might sink in, but I'm not a get-along kind of guy.
Young adults are turned off to the world. Young middle aged are stuck in their ways. Where is the window?
The harsh reality is that the future is bleak, but no one has an open mind. They want to believe that things will be fine. Thanks for your wedge of clarity (check out Wisdom of Pakistan's previous comments for someone who resonates with your stance).
Cold Camel
Agree completely. Same here too. I'm "still" with the herd and I think I know how to get out but the fear of the unknown is only natural, I suppose? I've been lucky to come in contact with some very smart sheep too. The problem seems, why don't they "see" the approaching problem that can very well be solved? Because, there is no problem.
We need an Adrenaline shot. It can come when the _actual_ world changes or when an external "Adrenaline shot" is given. It also depends on the Sheep's belief systems.
... Which is why I attempted what I could by starting the post as "Picture this"... :)
In Florida they grafted orange tree shoots onto lemon rootstock. The lemon rootstock was resistant to mold and disease and the orange shoot produced sweet fruit. Genetic engineering is similar to grafting fruit trees. The world has benefitted greatly from bioengineering. We might get pest resistant plants from bioengineering firms that require fewer pesticide applications. A pesticide called pyrethrin was extracted from the chrysanthemum plant and was used to kill bugs. Artificially produced pyrethrin is yet a popular pesticide for some applications. Some plants have natural defense systems that might be joined to other plants good traits.
Wrong. Grafting fruit trees to different root stocks does not alter the DNA of either. Also, current genetic engineering is a bit of a scatter gun approach. DNA from an organism with a desired trait is injected into the target species. Along with that trait comes a bunch of unrelated DNA. What's the effect? Roundup ready corn with other traits that may or may not be expressed. If all that's being tested for is immunity to Roundup, then other stuff can easily slip through. Then there's terminator seeds that destroy the tradition of seed saving that's as old as agriculture itself. Then let's not forget that pesticide/herbicide soaked agriculture has greater losses to pests than before these chemicals were introduced.
By far the safest and most sustainable approach is to abandon the chemicals, let nature make the mutations, and let the farmer save the seeds that work the best for the climate and soil conditions. The oil is going to run out anyway, so why not get with the program with a future?
Genetic engineering is thing of finesse. Merely because you cannot see a similarity between grafting and gene splicing does not mean everyone will become like the Amish and abandon modern agricultural practice. Let the farmers decide what seed they want to plant. I like the idea of new hybrids that do not take hundreds of years of cross pollination to make.
1. It doesn't take hundreds of years to create viable hybrids. It sometimes is successful in two or three generations.
2. Equating grafting and gene splicing is naive. They are very different things. Even cross pollination is a natural proccess.
3.The possibility of unintended consequences doesn't justify the risk.
4. Once we insert "frankenplants" into the environment there's no turning back.
"DNA from an organism with a desired trait is injected into the target species"
On top of that, it is done by breaking the target cell's natural resistance to being taken over by foreign DNA. Since these modified plants are not designed to reproduce - seeds are meant to be purchased every season, and not saved - one doesn't know how this deliberate breaking of the target plant's natural resistance will affect future plant generations.
Unless these GM plants interbreed with other non-GM plants, passing on a lower tolerance to foreign DNA.
My worst nightmare. Plant AIDS.
Addendum : There are about one third more genes in corn DNA than in human DNA. The potential for unintended consequences is horrific.
"Genetic engineering is similar to grafting fruit trees."
you're confusing two very different things there..
Considering how hydrocarbon agriculture has reached a point of diminishing returns, Peak Oil may be just the thing to revive sustainable agriculture. Unfortunately, due to population overshoot there will be many people hurt by the process. In the long run it will be better for both the people and agriculture as both will have a better balance with the uncultivated world. One can only hope that monoculturalistic corporations will ultimately fail in their attempts to make biology into a profit making venture.
I appreciate Sunson's post and believe that all over populated countries need the utmost compassion. Growing my own food is difficult. When my hens lower their egg production in the winter, the idea of adding artificial light crosses my mind. Doing without or doing with less is not a natural part of my cultural vocabulary. If my nutrition was totally dependent on the egg production of my hens, the choice would be obvious in favor of the lights. Right now I have the luxury of being "natural" and giving my hens a break, in tune with nature. If my home was overpopulated or nutritionally deficient , another story. I am glad that Sunson if finding solutions that are in tune with nature and are able to feed his family.
Each new "advancement" seems to allow for an exponential population increase, requiring more "advancements." Seems to me like most humans are pretty stupid, as humans will decimate this earth and cause our "intelligent form of life" to cease sooner or later. But talking about it all in the meantime is interesting. And the final chapter probably won't be in my lifetime.
Best thing I've done all year is getting my 7 kW PV system up and going. Every little bit to delay what appears to be inevitable. . .:)
we can no longer afford agriculture. it has destroyed the earth. we must all reduce our lifestyles. may i suggest stone knives and bear skins?
hard scrabble hunter gathering. i envision a world with 1 million people on it. no high technology. no high culture. no written word. no cities.
no webtube comment posting. no gold man sacks, no gubbermint, no organized religion, no frozen pizzas. no fleet of space ships to get methane from the lakes of titan, a moon of saturn. no trillion dolllar military machine. it is the doomer manifesto. our fall must be complete and absolute. "it's all good"
err... are you bargaining with reality?
The Sea of Galilee is the largest freshwater lake in Israel. For years fishermen have provided local restaurants there with fresh fish. The lake is about 14 miles long. Fishing has been occurring at such a rate that the fish population was collapsing as much as 10 percent a year. The government was trying to impose a ban on fishing for two years:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/179193
It's OK. Paper Mac (above) is designing a new fish for Galilee ;-) (with all due respect for his interesting posts).
Thank you for the post, Sunson. I also read a few earlier entries on your blog, and was struck by the plight of the poor farmers you describe, who are required to raise cattle in addition to crops on the little bit of poorly irrigated land they are allocated. In my comments on an earlier post, I have been trying to get Jason Bradford to explain why he thinks putting 50% of the world's cropland into pasture is a good idea, when I think we need all of our cropland to grow a plant-based diet for people, and can't afford the pasture. Unfortunately, the West is not only exporting GM and fossil fuel-based industrial ag, it's also exporting a heavy meat-eating lifestyle that is too land and resource intensive to support the world's present population, let alone the higher number on the way.
I am interested to know what the level of meat consumption is in the diet of people in your region, and how much understanding there is of the trade-off between land for cattle and land for human food crops. Who is getting the cow meat - the rich or the poor? And how do the farmers handle their household urine and feces? Is there any understanding of the necessity and safe means by which these nutrients can be returned to the soil? In contrast to some other respondents to your post, and very much in keeping with Fukuoka, I think soil health is the most important variable in yield in the situation you describe - far more important than GM - and this health can best be brought about on small plots with limited water by ending animal culture, ending tillage, always keeping the soil surface covered with straw and other biomass, and returning as much human urine and feces (properly composted) as possible to the soil. GM for marginal soil is a doubly bad idea. Rebuild the soil, no need for GM. Colonial history aside, what is the biggest obstacle right now: lack of seed, lack of land, lack of tools, or lack of reliable low-input demonstration plots and technical assistance in the region?
I looked at the comments to my article and responded there.
I appreciate that, Jason, and hope you will follow that conversation to its conclusion. Here, I was rather hoping to spark a conversation about the percentage of cropland you or any other analyst would recommend should be allocated to pasture in India. What is the best way to build soil in this region? Is soil fertility more important than GM? What is the best way to build soil fertility on the minimum of land per capita with the minimum of inputs? I don't see anyone else asking these questions.
I'm very interested in any comment you might have on the ratio of pasture to cropland in your region, Sunson. I understand you have been busy replying to others, and in those responses you have made it clear that you value long-term soil fertility over GM. What is your view on livestock? I think of ahimsa as the highest form of agricultural technology. It is at the heart of do-nothing farming, in my view. In yours?
I expect that in the future we will see more such posts scapegoating the British or Americans for all the self- inflicted problems of the overcrowded Third World.
The real cause of poverty is overpopulation and corruption.
Thanks, Gail, for posting this article.
From the comments I see that many still hold on to their delusions of control, and doubt that someone from the other side of the globe could have anything to say. Is it too much to listen to the experience of others?
A careful review of North American history is not heartening. It has much in common with a relentless, downward descent: A rich continent plundered to produce goodies and toys. The goodies and toys are not yet gone, but the original wealth that was looted to create them will not come back ever.
Clearly, on a time-scale longer than three centuries, our way of life is an utter disaster.
Enjoy your memories: It is just so over.
I concur. Thanks Gail and Suraj for the thoughtful article.
Hear! Hear! That really needed to be said.
Suraj, First I must say that I agree with the general tone of your post especially with the issues related to colonialism of the past and the more subtle and insidious sort such as practiced by the Monsantos of the world. That having been said the genie has been released from the test tube so to speak and your analogy to Microsoft sending a fix for a bug is possibly more apt than you may have intended.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/church_venter09/church_venter09_index.html
Granted I'm most unhappy about having ExxonMobil team up with Craig Venter to manipulate genetic code in living organisms, but then I don't like Microsoft's global monopoly on computer software either.Though in a way it laid the foundations of an ecosystem which allowed for the evolution of opensource software such as Linux.
Unless of course they evolved. Lenski, R. E. (year). The E. coli long-term experimental evolution project site. http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli
Hopefully as the technology matures there will be more and more people who will also aquire the knowledge to wrest some of the power to control our lives away from big Ag and Pharma.
http://www.smartmobs.com/2009/06/19/networks-of-garage-biology/
However the genie is indeed out of the bottle and there is no way to put it back.
For those interested in a fairly scientific analysis of GE products, read this.
"Why is AgBiotech not ready for prime time?
It's the process, not just the products"
"In the not too distant future, some group of clever scientists will do a full cost accounting of the benefits and costs of GE agriculture. And what will they find? Will we even be able to claim a "break even" outcome? And who will bear the externalized costs - the farmers who grew the GE products or the consuming public who involuntarily supported them through their taxes? Or will those who researched and promoted GE - knowing full well that environmental and food safety risks have not been meaningfully assessed - be held accountable, like the tobacco industry? "
http://www.plant.uoguelph.ca/research/homepages/eclark/laird.htm
Most interesting is the table of untested and since invalidated assumptions.
I don't want to be misunderstood to be saying that there are not a whole host of very serious issues that need to be very carefully examined when it comes to GE products in general. There are. Also who or what corporation is in control of a patent or process and are their ethics beholden to their shareholders short term profit motives? There are plenty of examples to cause us to have serious concerns.
However I would like to note that the paper you link to is almost a decade old and there has been an enormous amount of water under bridge since then in this field.
GE is a tool it is not intrinsically good or evil. What people do with it and whether they prepared to use it wisely is much more important. Biological evolution through natural selection has been genetically engineering organisms for about 3.5 billion years. So we are now adding one more wrinkle to the process.
Best hopes for wise and ethical wielding of all our technologies. Also for a more mature humanity.
Agreed, it is a paper from 2000. In ten years, though, we just got more GM crops, and nowhere I could find where the issues were addressed.
Kicking the can down the road....
The point where GE differs from "natural" evolution is that it deliberately introduces foreign DNA into the cell against the natural barriers, to respond to man-made conditions rather than changes in the natural environment that select for the fittest individuals.
Where GE is unlike computer programming is that computers can't replicate themselves. The idea that we can have any control of the "programming" of life out in the real world is absurd.
We not only can we but we are doing it now and will do it more and more. I'm not saying that's good or bad but it is already part of our reality. So it becomes even more important to educate ourselves about it. If you are interested check out this link.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/church_venter09/church_venter09_index.html
To pretend that we can't or won't do this is not in my opinion a very useful strategy given that it is being done already.
In Vitro, perhaps.
My point is that once this In Vitro creation comes out of the test tube and into the real world, there is just no telling how it will behave in the long run, since we can no longer control the conditions of the experiment.
The fact that we are doing this at all just demonstrates to me the depth of our collective insanity.
Addendum : I have a computer science degree, and used to work for a rather large software manufacturer.
The reality of programming is that large software suites of programs are worked on in segments, sometimes by programmers all over the world. Once there is no longer a holistic view of programming, or a means of testing all the likely scenarios, including all the pieces working together, what you find happening is unexpected "bugs" or "crashes" that require endless patching after release.
The whole is no longer stable, and, then, often rquires a total rewrite of the entire suite.
Insane or not, what it demonstrates to me is that we can ever less afford to be a numerically and scientifically illiterate society. Knowledge is power, if we as individuals are not empowering ourselves to best of our abilities our voices are drowned out by those who do have the knowledge.
The collective bar must be raised, despite the fact that it seems TPTB have been able to work tirelessly to dumb us down into complacency.
With the power of today's media and PR, particularly the new ability for corporations to endlessly fund campaign ads, I don't hold out too much hope.
I agree all the more reason to fight back.
There are some tools humanity is not wise enough to handle just yet. The existence of a group of scientific experts engaged in an activity is not evidence that the activity is a legitimate use of a PhD or a higher security level of academic credentialing.
Perhaps, but since some of humanity is already using them the rest of us had better come up to speed.
On the other hand I can't conceive of any illegitimate fields of knowledge, illegitimate application of knowledge is another matter.
Maybe this is fine for "fields," but people who wish to use ducks as pest controls in their gardens need to know the following:
1. Ducks eat what they want, in the quantities they decide. They don't care whether they're eating beneficial insects or pests. I've never seen a duck eat a Japanese beetle (they rest high off the ground). Ducks cannot possibly knock back infestations of pests like Colorado potato beetle.
2. Ducks chomp leafy plants down to stubs.
3. Ducks trample everything flat.
4. Ducks shit everywhere.
Live and learn. No more ducks in my gardens.
You could always roast them ;-)
Those sentences set off alarm bells in the back of my head. Here's a web page from the Centers for Disease Control describing the problem. Here's another source describing it in more detail.
In a nutshell, the problem is that ducks shed avian influenza viruses in their feces. This would be bad enough, but if you mix ducks, pigs, and humans on the same farm, you have a natural influenza development laboratory on your hand. Pigs are susceptible to swine flu, avian flu, and human flu. If a pig gets two or more flus at the same time, the viruses swap DNA, a process known as antigenic shift, and you end up with a radically different and potentially more lethal strain of flu that nobody has any resistance to. This remixing of genes was the source of the Spanish Flu that killed millions of people after WWI, and the H1N1 virus that is currently going the rounds.
Most of the world's influenza outbreaks originate in Southeast Asia for the reason that there are a lot of small farms with a mix of ducks, pigs, and people; and they have no controls on disease transmission among them. Farms in Western countries are more careful to keep their species separated. Bottom line - just because people have been doing something for centuries doesn't mean it's safe.
Natural population control? Either that or practicing safe raising of livestock and safe sex, as you know that might be too much to ask of your average human ;-)
Actually, we're too far ahead of the curve on disease prevention that we can't count on disease to keep population down to a manageable level. Practicing safe sex with livestock will only work for a limited subset of the population. I think modern birth control methods are the only realistic solution.
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LOL LOL LOL!
L,
Sid.
This and disease vectors associated with all livestock can also be viewed as an argument in support of veganic food production systems.
I had decided to stay out of this but I HAVE HAD IT WITH THE CONVENTIONAL VS. ORGANIC DEBATE
I have been a small-scale certified, organic grower, I've done farm compliance inspections, my wife and I chaired the certification committee of our local chapter of California Certified Organic Farmers, I've spoken at dozens of pesticide applicator seminars throughout northern CA for years on everything from endocrine distruptors and the FQPA to organic sports turf management and GMOs. I also served on the board of the Pesticide Applicators Professional Association which is the largest non-profit provider of pesticide applicator continuing education in CA. And, I might add that anyone who applies pesticides in CA regardless of "name" has to have approved education via seminars and such to get their private applicator "card" or maintain their license. And, FWIW, I also have a landscape contractor's license.
All of you have g..d tunnel vision. The reality is that there is a melding of the best of organic and conventional. It has been taking place for several years. People are scouting fields rather than spraying on a schedule. They are using pheromone disruption. They are concerned about organic matter and on and on.
The future is most closely displayed by the work of the Rodale Research Institute and their emphasis upon regenrative agriculture. This IS the future. Check out their site.
Sorry for the rant.
Todd
PS And, since we stopped growing certified crops years ago, even I combine methods. I do a lot of soil building including cover crops and Terra Preta but use conventional 20-20-20 soluble fertilizer with trace minerals to fertigate my crops. I also use, sorry, Round-Up to keep the grasses down under my fruit trees and grapes. I'm too old to run that weed whacker and mulching costs too much.
That would be my approach, too. I compost, mulch, hand-weed, trellis and even hand-dig some beds.
But I also use pesticides and fungicides judiciously. I will NOT use homeopathic remedies on my cows! If they get sick, they're going to a conventional veterinarian.
We can't call the farm "organic," and we don't give a damn anymore.
This site contains a hilarious introduction featuring Rodale.
Hi Mike,
I just came in from working on a tree that came down in a storm (and another storm is just about here). Sorry, but I missed the Rodale stuff...guess I was too tired to see it. But, it looked like "organic" bashing at a glance.
Rodale has done better work comparing conventional and alternative methods than lots Fed and university research much less alternative methods like permaculture and biodynamics.
What drives me nuts as a former research chemist and process development manager (and certified organic farmer...and chem plant manager for that matter) is the el crapo quality of ag research that is used to justify alternative methods as mentioned above. You don't see replicated plots; you don't see appropriate soil analysis, etc. What you see are annectdotal articles like "I grew 4,000# of tomatoes in 10 square feet."
I am not pro conventional ag nor am I pro organic. What I want to see are people looking at REAL research with replicated plots, et.al.. Rodale has done this and it ain't "organic gardening" anymore.
A few days ago I mentioned the Sustainable Ag Research and Education Program (SARE.org). People should get a copy of The New American Farmer (available from SARE) to see how people are combining these methods. There is a whole world out there that is invisible to people/growers.
Todd
PS I have to mention this: I use Remuda (glyphosphate = Round-Up) because it is cheap. Why is it cheap? Because the patent for Round-Up is over. That is why Monsanto got into RR seeds - without it they would have lost their cash cow.
Great perspectives from the producer end of the food chain! I am with you all the way about combining the best of organic/conventional. And it's true that organic inspection and certification does nothing, in itself, to improve quality. But that's not what it's for.
What I mean is that certification is useful for consumers, not producers. It gives them a certain number of guarantees that they can't get any other way, in the general case. The best guarantee is a short supply chain, preferably with direct contact with the producer. But that's not an option for most people, and certification is the next best thing.
Best hopes for a short food chain!
Alistair
Hi Suraj,
Thanks to Gail for posting your essay, it is very insightful. Just to add a couple of info sources: on education it is worth perusing John Taylor Gatto's website, author of the book on education called 'Dumbing Us Down', and his free online treatise The Underground History of American Education. And this brilliant experiment called The Hole in the Wall - its based in India and has far reaching consequences for understanding how young humans really learn.
As for GE and GMOs, it reminds me of the days when Radium was thought to be 'good for you' - did you know that Radium Chocolate was made in Germany? It was one of lots of products such as hair tonic, toothpaste, ointments, and elixirs. Why do I mention these now obscure 'products'? Because of the parallels of ignorance.
It has been known for many decades that genes are not the fixed entity they were once thought by materialist/reductionist theorists. Lynn Margulis was an early pioneer in the area of symbiosis, and more recently the work of Mae Wan Ho has highlighted the fluidity of the genome. And perhaps the most startling discovery that puts paid to the deterministic/reductionist model is the discovery that we're only 'half human'. Frank Ryans book Virolution is a fascinating account of how symbiotic development has assisted natural selection. It is fast becoming apparent that the planet is indeed a symbiotic whole with a hyper-complex web of relationships and interactions: what we do to 'one bit' we do to 'all' of it.
It also might be said natural selection is dead, long live symbiotic development!
Best Wishes,
L,
Sid.